To really solve the housing crisis we'll need to use this device to print some affordable land first.
It also needs to magically make cities less desirable places to live.
A house 3D printed from raw earth
61–70 of 261 posts
Re: A house 3D printed from raw earth
#62You might be more familiar with Mapei, the company that developed the material, TECLA. They are tight lipped about the actual ingredients and chemistry, but it seems to rely on soil that naturally contains cement or lime. The structure also requires a spray applied coating to ensure waterproofness. https://www.engineeringforchange.org/news/finally-credible-p...
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.
Re: A house 3D printed from raw earth
#63I thought this was going to be about... bricks. Houses are traditionally made from earth.
Re: A house 3D printed from raw earth
#64Excellent 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…
I don't understand why people think shipping containers are a good idea for housing. They were never designed for this and will always be compromised when you come to put windows, doors, insulation and services in them.
Right, they're so bad. Structurally unsound once you start putting windows in. They need insulation which either significantly intrudes on your interior space or you put it on the outside and you then need to do basically a traditional exterior and lose any supposed benefit of the metal enclosure.
Re: A house 3D printed from raw earth
#65I hope 3D printing homes will take off now that lumber prices are so ridiculous. The sudden cost increases in other materials will now hopefully give 3d printing space to achieve economies of scale. Imagine homes that are printed with a 20 year life expectancy. Especially in America where I don't know many families that remain in the same house for 20 years. We could start going to the Japanese model of razing the ho…
I think that's the first time I've heard of someone considering the Japanese home ownership model aspirational. Isn't that also where the 100 year mortgage idea started? I'd rather see that we built really solid houses that are fundamentally designed for ease of renovation, rather than routinely raze and rebuild from scratch. Code improves over time but not on a timescale that makes 20-year rebuilds sensible.
Unfortunately a lot of the rebuilds happens because of dramatic code changes. Houses built just 5 years ago will often be illegal to build again. Only way to bring it up to code is total remodel or worse tear down.
Re: A house 3D printed from raw earth
#66Every one of these obnoxious mud huts I’ve ever seen are single story, on like 10 acres of land, in a car-dependent rural area. More people living like this would worsen every current issue we face with environmental sustainability.
Re: A house 3D printed from raw earth
#67To really solve the housing crisis we'll need to use this device to print some affordable land first.
There is plenty of land, just not in desirable locations. But if you could build infrastructure easily and with speed, maybe those locations can be transformed too. Up until last 40 years ago people didn't want to live on the ocean. Now they can't get enough. US has a huge swaths of land empty, especially in the Pacific Northwest.
>Up until last 40 years ago people didn't want to live on the ocean. Now they can't get enough. US has a huge swaths of land empty, especially in the Pacific Northwest.
Can you expand on this please? What do you mean by 'people didn't want to live on the ocean' and also, what do you mean by 'vast swaths of empty land in the PNW'. Are you talking east of the cascades? I don't think there is a whole lot of land there with an oceanic climate?
Re: A house 3D printed from raw earth
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Shipping container housing" is the "nuclear energy" of housing solutions.
Can you elaborate? Not everyone would see this as a bad thing. Many would argue that nuclear energy, while not perfect, is a logical next step that, solves quite effectively for the problem of demand.
Often container homes go above and beyond in their retrofits, and it would have been more effective to just build it conventionally. Both from a cost perspective and as a final result. If someone is happy with a simple container home, it really wouldn't be hard to build a similar box more conventionally.
I suspect the real issue at hand is that you're usually not allowed to build such a house, which is where the "tiny home on wheels" trend came about. Ignoring the part where an entire group of people seem to have forgotten that caravans exist, the "on wheels" part lets you build out-of-code homes and put them places you wouldn't be allowed to otherwise.
It really depends on a lot of factors though. What draws someone to a container home, is it the re-use and recycling? Is it the do-it-yourself nature of the project? If so, that's wicked, but I think we can probably work out ways to achieve those two things while also getting better and cheaper houses as the end result, if regulations would let you actually deploy such a house.
Re: A house 3D printed from raw earth
#69Yet another example of the over-hype of “3D Printing”. Yes it’s neat that they collected some local dirt, mixed it with some non-locally sourced water and binder, and poured it into an extruder run on some kind of non locally sourced energy, then sprayed it with some protective coating - it baffles me that people see this as a possible mainstream building technique. Running electrical, plumbing, air conditioning etc…
Exactly. God knows how many concepts I've seen for mixing local soils with magic powder and (typically) forming up walls. I do like that these guys could make rather free-form structures, but building an envelope is straightforward and runs into the issues of actually using the thing (seismic&water issues, installation of utilities, insulation, HVAC, longevity, insurance). It's pretty hard to beat traditional methods…
You bring up a good point. I have yet to see anyone construct some of these structures on a shake table and report the resultant data. I wouldn't look for unreasonably good performance, but I wonder how it would perform against, for instance, modern rammed earth structures?
If any engineers out there have links to tests or studies please do post them.
Re: A house 3D printed from raw earth
#70Every one of these obnoxious mud huts I’ve ever seen are single story, on like 10 acres of land, in a car-dependent rural area. More people living like this would worsen every current issue we face with environmental sustainability.
Good luck trying to get permits to build anything the slightest bit unconventional in any populated area. I looked at building a geodesic dome, and was going to end up in the boonies and likely still paying off the inspector to pull permits. You could get it done in town and it would have to be over-built, completely ruining the whole efficiency angle of the dome to begin with, and taking months or years to work through the process.