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A house 3D printed from raw earth

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Re: A house 3D printed from raw earth

#141

Post by ogre_codes »

nanna wrote: post #86

Lots of unfair negativity here. I think this is wonderful. HN is full of random hacked-up tech that will never solve the worlds problems but nonetheless give a glimpse at what alternatives could look like. Experiments. This is what this is, and in my opinion it's stunning and I would move into one in an instant.

There are better ways to build affordable housing already.

You make a factory that builds prefabricated panels then deliver them onsite. With prefab, you don’t need to transport an expensive piece of equipment to remote parts of the world and have onsite experts there to supervise and repair it. You don’t have to deal with tear down and setup of the equipment at every site and installers have predictable channels to install any power/ water infrastructure.

I suspect the reason this is popular is more because they are aesthetically pleasing and use new/ special technology than anything else.

Re: A house 3D printed from raw earth

#142

Post by ogre_codes »

dcolkitt wrote: post #18
newsbinator wrote: post #2

In all of these demos, they never show you the resulting bathroom, shower, or kitchen. It's always "here's a shell we made". I'd like to see the finished house, with fixtures in place and working.

Modern bathroom pods are very easy to install and come in pre-configured sizes. They're literally just plug and play. After that, the only challenge is making sure you have plumbing connections at the bathroom and kitchen sites. But modern pex plumbing makes that pretty easy. You're just running flexible rubber tubes from the multiplexer. In this sort of design, I'd imagine you can just pre-print the holes for the tu…

Modern houses are very easy to install and come in preconfigured shapes. They ship flat packed components and drop them on site for low skilled workers to build. They include things like bathrooms and kitchens as part of the build.

Re: A house 3D printed from raw earth

#143

Post by mnouquet »

kube-system wrote: post #138
mnouquet wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The modern car's engineering of modern car might be astonishing, but at this point there is so much disposable parts that I question their environmental friendliness...

Like what? Modern maintenance intervals are way longer than in the past, and vehicles today are way more reliable and last longer in general.

Reliance on non-repairable electronics everywhere, fully sealed mechanical parts, etc. Efficiency comes at the cost of more moving parts, more sensors, higher pressure, tighter tolerances, which all introduces more failure points harder to debug/replace. Not to mention lighter thinner non-cost prohibitive materials are easier to damage.

As a rule of thumb, I will only buy pre-2008 vehicles, things only went from bad to worst after that era.

Re: A house 3D printed from raw earth

#144

Post by mbgerring »

vanderZwan wrote: post #112
mbgerring wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what sense is a mud hut a novel technology?

Your argument is the equivalent of asking in what sense a wheel is novel technology while comparing a car to a horse drawn carriage. It's not about the mud hut. It's about how the mud hut was made .

I am aware that novel techniques for building mud huts are created all the time, and none of those new techniques address the fundamental issue with all of them — this building technique is only suited to single-story buildings on large tracts of land. 3D printing the mud hut doesn’t meaningfully alter that constraint.

The “environmental sustainability” gains you get from using on-site materials would be totally erased by the fact that if you actually built houses like this at scale and expected people to live in them, we would have to massively increase the land area occupied by humans, which is the exact opposite direction we need to go in.

Show me where this technology can knock down the cost of adding infill housing or building vertically in locations where land and construction are expensive (that is, where people actually want to live), and it’ll be worth paying attention to. Otherwise it’s just a dumb, expensive distraction.

Re: A house 3D printed from raw earth

#145

Post by Animats »

noughtme wrote: post #87
bilbo0s wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a nit-pick, but the spray applicants generally render earthen buildings moisture resistant, not waterproof. You generally use the old tried and true methods to handle moisture, water and rain. "Good hat. Good boots." Well coordinating landscaping. And appropriate interior ventilation in critical areas.

Yes and no. Having worked in building construction, both classes of coatings would have relevant applications. I was going to complain that Mapei has not released any technical details, but it appears they have: https://www.mapei.com/it/en/news-and-events/event-detail/201... However, that their "water-repellent" provides "waterproofing" does not clear things up.

The actual products that make it work:

Mapesoil 10.[1] "High-performance, fibre-reinforced powdered stabilising agent for sports sub-base contruction surfaces".The amount of Mapesoil 10 required is 3%-5% of the dirt weight. Comes in 500kg bags, on pallets.

Dynamon SR4 [2] "Superplasticizer based on acrylic polymer for concrete with long slump retention". About 1%-2% of the mix. That gets the material through the 3D printer without clogging.

Planicrete [3] "Synthetic-rubber latex to improve the adhesion of cement mixes". About 2% of the mix. That helps each layer adhere to the previous layers, the usual problem with 3D printing.

These are all standard additives for concrete.

There's also a waterproofing agent sprayed on afterwards.

The same materials would probably work with concrete forms. Plus, then you could do tamping. The trouble with most of these 3D building systems is that there's no tamping or ramming to solidify the material. It's just squirted on like toothpaste. So problems with voids and leakage are to be expected.

All this requires the right dirt. Probably something with a high clay content. Too much sand or too much topsoil and it probably won't become hard enough.

As with rammed earth construction [4] this may not hold up in wet climates.

[1] https://cdnmedia.mapei.com/docs/librariesprovider2/products-...

[2] https://cdnmedia.mapei.com/docs/librariesprovider2/products-...

[3] https://cdnmedia.mapei.com/docs/librariesprovider2/products-...

[4] https://www.firstinarchitecture.co.uk/rammed-earth-construct...

Re: A house 3D printed from raw earth

#146

Post by cheeze »

flatline wrote: post #117
etxm wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dammit. I just started looking into building a dome house. Did you call it off completely?

Yes. I talked to a builder, he thought he was going to have to do R22 insulation across the entire thing because it’s not clear whether it is a wall or ceiling. Ridiculous because the engineering for domes has been around for 70 years. Most lenders won’t help you. Appraisal for resale is problematic. I concluded it is best done as a DIY project in a location where you know the inspector, or know he won’t care, with c…

I think the lender thing makes sense. Lenders are all about risk mitigation, and unfortunately at this time there are just too many risks around a geodesic dome as a house. Lots of folks think that building a house is a potential approach to finding a place to live, but the reality is that doing so is playing house finding on extra hard mode.

It's hard enough to get a loan to build a house, let alone an unconventional one.

Re: A house 3D printed from raw earth

#148

Post by blacksmith_tb »

ogre_codes wrote: post #141
nanna wrote: post #86

Lots of unfair negativity here. I think this is wonderful. HN is full of random hacked-up tech that will never solve the worlds problems but nonetheless give a glimpse at what alternatives could look like. Experiments. This is what this is, and in my opinion it's stunning and I would move into one in an instant.

There are better ways to build affordable housing already. You make a factory that builds prefabricated panels then deliver them onsite. With prefab, you don’t need to transport an expensive piece of equipment to remote parts of the world and have onsite experts there to supervise and repair it. You don’t have to deal with tear down and setup of the equipment at every site and installers have predictable channels to…

True, though you still need to transport all those panels to the site and assemble them - one interesting aspect here is that the materials are (mostly) present. That doesn't make for much savings of emissions for a single house, but if you built ten at once... I also wonder if you couldn't carve out a basement/cellar and use the dirt displaced to build the house over it, that'd provide storage.

Re: A house 3D printed from raw earth

#149

Post by kube-system »

mnouquet wrote: post #143
kube-system wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like what? Modern maintenance intervals are way longer than in the past, and vehicles today are way more reliable and last longer in general.

Reliance on non-repairable electronics everywhere, fully sealed mechanical parts, etc. Efficiency comes at the cost of more moving parts, more sensors, higher pressure, tighter tolerances, which all introduces more failure points harder to debug/replace. Not to mention lighter thinner non-cost prohibitive materials are easier to damage. As a rule of thumb, I will only buy pre-2008 vehicles, things only went from bad…

And despite the additional complexity, reliability has improved. I have an old carbureted vehicle, and while it might be simple, the environmental shortcomings it has well outweigh any o2 sensor that might need replaced at 200k miles.

Re: A house 3D printed from raw earth

#150

Post by [deleted] »

reversengineer wrote: post #26

Excellent idea as a proof of concept, and even beautiful in design. However one cannot help but wonder how structurally sound these materials are. Stress tests are needed to determine how well this would hold up over years of exposure to the elements before being produced en masse. For a sustainable alternative, homes made from repurposed shipping containers are a cost-effective solution for housing. They are made of…

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