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posted by Fnord666 on Friday March 16 2018, @09:15PM   Printer-friendly
from the got-a-little-Z-banding-going-on dept.

A startup is 3D printing houses in under a day at a cost of about $10,000 each, and hopes to get it down to $4,000 each:

ICON has developed a method for printing a single-story 650-square-foot house out of cement in only 12 to 24 hours, a fraction of the time it takes for new construction. If all goes according to plan, a community made up of about 100 homes will be constructed for residents in El Salvador next year. The company has partnered with New Story, a nonprofit that is vested in international housing solutions. "We have been building homes for communities in Haiti, El Salvador, and Bolivia," Alexandria Lafci, co-founder of New Story, tells The Verge.

[...] Using the Vulcan printer, ICON can print an entire home for $10,000 and plans to bring costs down to $4,000 per house. "It's much cheaper than the typical American home," Ballard says. It's capable of printing a home that's 800 square feet, a significantly bigger structure than properties pushed by the tiny home movement, which top out at about 400 square feet. In contrast, the average New York apartment is about 866 square feet.

The model has a living room, bedroom, bathroom, and a curved porch. "There are a few other companies that have printed homes and structures," Ballard says. "But they are printed in a warehouse, or they look like Yoda huts. For this venture to succeed, they have to be the best houses." The use of cement as a common material will help normalize the process for potential tenants that question the sturdiness of the structure. "I think if we were printing in plastic we would encounter some issues."

Also at Fortune, Wired, and BGR.


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  • (Score: 1) by anubi on Sunday March 18 2018, @06:37AM

    by anubi (2828) on Sunday March 18 2018, @06:37AM (#654365) Journal

    I posted because I would love to build my "retirement house" out of these, out in the middle of nowhere. Put 'em up and sheath it with a layer of stone fascia... and make it so I do not spend a fortune heating and cooling the thing... If I play my cards right, I would love to go somewhere I can access the water table so I can get or put heat into the water using propane as the refrigeration fluid ( propane... cheap and nontoxic... so if I lose a load due to a leak, no big deal - I just do my heat engine work outside so there is no way of filling my home with escaped propane vapor. ).

    I intend to run an ice bank as well, so I can store thermal energy that way, so I can save away the ability to heat or cool my place during times of plenty of solar panel energy. Nothing says I can't make a small subterranean "ice chest" for making ice in on hot days. So I can cool my place by chillled water fancoil units.

    Hoping I can get enough energy from solar panels to run those new brushless three-phase motors like used on the Fisher and Paykel machine. Maybe someone in the refrigeration business will start making hermetically sealed compressors with motors of this design. Something like this will not only let me very precisely let me set the rate of heat transfer, it will also let me make the best use of limited amounts of power by letting me use optimal power point tracking techniques.

    There are so many neat things one can do with refrigeration and heat transfer... but I find so few people who are interested enough to actually build the things. I fully intend to, now that I have some retirement income coming in and don't have to answer to the leadership men who tell me not to do such things.

    --
    "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]