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posted by on Monday April 24 2017, @05:22PM   Printer-friendly
from the not-by-the-hairs-on-my-3D-printed-chin dept.

A company called Apis Cor has 3D printed a (tiny) house in 24 hours for $10,000, which comes out to about $275/m2.

Reconstructing Buckingham Palace at 77,000 m2 this way would cost only about $21 million. According to a 2010 estimate in The Guardian: "you could build a new energy-efficient replica of the palace for a knock-down £320m", which translates to $552 million.

So: 3D printing the palace would save over a HALF BILLION DOLLARS! Muahahaha (pinkies up!).

Video of the building process.


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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 24 2017, @05:44PM (6 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 24 2017, @05:44PM (#498958)

    The real benefit to this technique is building either your perfectly sculpted Elfin Castle, deep in the woods, or your 'carved out of stone' Dwarven Mountain Home, complete with roughened spire for only a fraction of the cost of finding one and carving it out...

    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 24 2017, @06:02PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 24 2017, @06:02PM (#498966)

      I have a better idea: Fuckingham Palace!

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 25 2017, @02:17AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 25 2017, @02:17AM (#499124)

        Agreed [google.com] [NSFW]

    • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday April 24 2017, @06:06PM (3 children)

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Monday April 24 2017, @06:06PM (#498968) Journal

      You could probably also 3D print exquisite detailed carved patterns in the walls. Or extrusions rather than indentations.

      You could also 3D print spaces for electrical junction boxes and smooth conduit paths between junction boxes and the main electrical panel. Now you can push your Cat 7, 8, 9, 10, . . . 23, 24 cables through the walls and have them working so fast that they won't be obsolete before installation is completed.

      Not sure about plumbing installation.

      --
      People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
      • (Score: 2) by mhajicek on Monday April 24 2017, @08:42PM (1 child)

        by mhajicek (51) on Monday April 24 2017, @08:42PM (#499044)

        Not with the tech they used. If you look at the pictures you'll see the resolution is quite crude.

        --
        The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
        • (Score: 2) by linkdude64 on Monday April 24 2017, @10:02PM

          by linkdude64 (5482) on Monday April 24 2017, @10:02PM (#499067)

          One 3D printer to do the rough work, one to do the finer details. Carpenters not needed as they may dovetail together with minor sanding and adhesive application.

          As a tradesperson, I am glad my area of work is in troubleshooting, rather than construction...that may remain relevant for some time more.

      • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday April 25 2017, @05:26AM

        by kaszz (4211) on Tuesday April 25 2017, @05:26AM (#499151) Journal

        There's a reason one installs small tubes into buildings instead of cables. Once a specific cabling standard is obsolete. Another one can just be pulled straight through.

        10GBASE-T using Category 6a goes 100 meter and 40GBASE-T goes 30 meter using Category 8. So this is indeed a moving target.

  • (Score: 1) by a-zA-Z0-9$_.+!*'(),- on Monday April 24 2017, @05:59PM (6 children)

    by a-zA-Z0-9$_.+!*'(),- (3868) on Monday April 24 2017, @05:59PM (#498964)

    but if we can get some downward pressure on the housing marking in places like the SF Bay Area, New York, Tokyo, etc. it might be worth it.

    --
    https://newrepublic.com/article/114112/anonymouth-linguistic-tool-might-have-helped-jk-rowling
    • (Score: 1) by anotherblackhat on Monday April 24 2017, @06:29PM (3 children)

      by anotherblackhat (4722) on Monday April 24 2017, @06:29PM (#498981)

      Construction costs have very little to do with prices in New York, S.F. or anywhere else for that matter.
      Fifty km from a big city prices drop a lot, yet construction costs do not.

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by fyngyrz on Monday April 24 2017, @07:14PM (1 child)

        by fyngyrz (6567) on Monday April 24 2017, @07:14PM (#499008) Journal

        This building has about the equivalent usable space of a square framed building of 18.5 feet on a side. That's a pretty small building – "tiny house" is exactly correct.

        By way of comparison, I built, from scratch, a 16'x16' square, 2"x4" construction insulated building, including traditional peaked metal roof, with finished internal walls, floor and ceiling, for just about $5,000.00. Two opposing doors, power and plumbing, filled foam sheet insulation, no windows. You can put together a nice, double-paned window of conventional size for about $100.00.*, I just didn't want any (was building with a stand-alone music studio in mind, and for years, used it instead as a tiny martial arts studio, though it's back to music production again now, as I'm old and worn out and the like.)

        The thing about this undertaking is that there were zero labor costs, inasmuch as I did all the work, had plumbing and electrical systems available to connect to, and I already owned the land. Labor is generally a huge component of building something small like this.

        Those two things – labor and land – along with the subsequent drain of taxes, inevitably change the cost picture enormously. Additionally, you'll notice the article does not address the land at all, and while they say they "paid for the work", I am very dubious that employing a machine similar to this would come at an insignificant cost. I'm not sure what the electrical and plumbing would have cost if I'd had to call on the utilities, contractors, etc. Montana, where I am, can be pretty loose about what you do with your own stuff on your own land. But you'd have to consider that for a new building of this type, stand-alone.

        The main advantages of this building printing process, it seems to me, are speed and (if you consider this an advantage) the ability to make arbitrary shapes. Me, I prefer rectangular rooms, because curves and non 90º angles almost always make you lose space to almost inevitably rectangular furniture and appliances (though the bit about the curved TV matching the wall radius was kind of funny and fortuitous.) But the speed... that's pretty awesome. It took me a month to build my little building, and I worked on it as much as I could. About a quarter of the time was wasted waiting on materials, but that was more of an organizational fail on my part, so perhaps it's not fair to count about a week of that month. You could certainly order everything, assuming you knew what you needed, and not start until it was all there.

        * We (my SO and I) have put together about fifteen windows [flickr.com], much larger (about six feet in height each), including art glass artwork for about $150 each (we turned an old church into a home, all the windows needed to be replaced, so we made them.) So I'm quite familiar with the process and the ultimate costs, from assembling the windows right down to routing and staining the trim.

        • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday April 24 2017, @08:58PM

          by Grishnakh (2831) on Monday April 24 2017, @08:58PM (#499046)

          Someone I know just bought a pre-fabricated 12' x 20' out-building, somewhat similar to what you describe, for just under $5000. It doesn't have insulation or electric/plumbing installed yet, so that'll be a little extra.

          Labor isn't *that* much when things are prefab.

      • (Score: 1) by a-zA-Z0-9$_.+!*'(),- on Monday April 24 2017, @10:30PM

        by a-zA-Z0-9$_.+!*'(),- (3868) on Monday April 24 2017, @10:30PM (#499076)

        You are probably right. What effect do you see this as having?

        --
        https://newrepublic.com/article/114112/anonymouth-linguistic-tool-might-have-helped-jk-rowling
    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday April 24 2017, @10:25PM (1 child)

      by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Monday April 24 2017, @10:25PM (#499073) Homepage

      That is the mentality of a useful idiot.

      I'm not against the idea of small houses, but suggesting that they will drive down urban housing costs down is wrong. If anything, it'll give greedy landowners excuses to pack more and more tiny houses on plots of land and charge ripoff rents for the "privilege" of having your own "house" on your own yard.

      And what about the infrastructure? The idea works if it's a lone cabin out in the boonies, not so well when you have these things laid out in rows and columns and all those people are pissing and shitting. Would you feel comfortable knowing that people walking by your tiny house can hear you shit? Or screw? Or communal bathrooms and showers picking up others' toilet-seat herpes from the former and foot-fungus from the latter?

      The people who are saying that living small is environmentally responsible are nothing more than Jew-bastards who want to charge you the same or more overpriced rents for living in more and more squalid conditions, much like prison. Living small is so they can cram more of you into a given space so they can make more money. And the more people who will move around an urban area for the small-living experience, the worse the problem will become -- and there's no shortage of trust-fund babies in America now that the boomers who spent their entire lives hoarding money are starting to die off.

      What would be awesome is if more tech companies built tech hubs in places like Montana or Wyoming or even Northern fucking Arizona to allow their workers more humane living conditions, rather than debt-slavery to live like caged animals or having to put up with all the assholery of San Fran and New York City. With the connectivity of the internet, living in the boonies isn't the extremely isolating situation it once was.

      I'd ditch California in a heartbeat if only there was more steady tech work in a less-retarded state. Well, if more of our business goes to Texas, I just might follow - I've lived in Texas before and I'd be a much better transplant than the usual degenerate bitchy flotsam coming in.

      • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday April 25 2017, @05:57AM

        by kaszz (4211) on Tuesday April 25 2017, @05:57AM (#499157) Journal

        The problem is usually access to willing funding capital. And investors have money otherwise they would not be able to invest. And with plenty of money they can live a good life even in crowded cities. So these circumstances won't affect them enough. But this setup also leaves the boonies without investment and customers of said investment. Thus the problem. On the other hand we are probably converging on a transition point where the conditions are ripe to just go fuck-this-shit-and-live-well.

        People usually don't need work. They need money and which provides housing and food primarily. If those can be had through other means people can defect from the squirrel wheel.

        I like your boonies tech hub idea. In fact it may not need to be exactly in the boonies, just a bit on the countryside where pricing is sane. Housing should be doable financially. Food is cheap. Communication can usually be accomplished somehow. It's tech people after all. What is needed is good ideas the can be traded for money so living can be supported.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 24 2017, @06:13PM (9 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 24 2017, @06:13PM (#498971)

    You know what this means? Revitalization on the grand scale!

    Housing construction has become so stagnant that new homes offer very little in the way of innovation, and yet cost so much money (which, I suppose, is one of the reasons there's so little innovation—who has the resources to fuck around?).

    The alternative is to buy an old house, which is undoubtedly shit, not only due to the poor standards of yore, but also due to the fact that most people are incorrigible slobs who have never heard of the word "maintain".

    Cheaper building will allow the world to knock down the cruft that has taken over human society, and try something new and innovative in its place; architecture will once again be a worthy profession.

    • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday April 24 2017, @09:01PM (4 children)

      by Grishnakh (2831) on Monday April 24 2017, @09:01PM (#499047)

      Old houses are almost invariably far better-built than new ones, as craftsmanship has gone down the toilet. However, technology is a lot better now, which makes up for the lousy craftsmanship for the most part.

      The best thing to do is to buy an old house, then gut it mostly, and renovate extensively. The framing should be excellent, but the insulation and windows will be terrible on an old house, as will the plumbing and electric. Of course, this is highly laborious so it's usually cheaper to just demolish and build new.

      Another thing that'd be great is to build a new steel-frame house from a builder that specializes in that, using a construction crew that's better than the incompetents that typical tract house builders use.

      • (Score: 2) by MostCynical on Monday April 24 2017, @09:26PM (3 children)

        by MostCynical (2589) on Monday April 24 2017, @09:26PM (#499054) Journal

        Builders cut corners.
        They didn't used to, but maybe the time-money equation has become so important now that any minor saving is worth it.
        Framing is only "to spec", as is plumbing and electrical installation, no better than legally required.
        Electricians run line diagonally across joists (no one needs to get in a roof, so that isn't a tripping hazard!)

        However, renovation is more expensive. The old house won't have the right layout, ripping walls out means additional supports (expensive, when the wall above is brick), and then you have to get "specialist" tradesmen, or your brickwork, plaste and fixtures won't match the "old" parts.

        No one expects a house to last 20 years, let alone 100, so why over-engineer?
        Mourn for loss of pride and quality (fridges, washing machines, houses...etc etc)

        /rant /lament

        --
        "I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 25 2017, @08:20AM (2 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 25 2017, @08:20AM (#499189)

          No one expects a house to last 20 years, let alone 100, so why over-engineer?

          Wait what? My house is 140 years old and it's one of the newer ones in my area. What are you building your houses out of? Straw?

          • (Score: 2) by MostCynical on Tuesday April 25 2017, @09:32AM (1 child)

            by MostCynical (2589) on Tuesday April 25 2017, @09:32AM (#499202) Journal

            most houses being built on estates in Australia (and likely, in many other places) are timber-framed, brick veneer, usually built after a knock-down of a house built sometime between 1922 and 1990. Massive building boom after WWI AND WWII, but mostly the WWI houses have already been extensively modified or demolished.
            An 'old' house in some areas would be ~50 years old. Many new houses are being built after knocking down 1980's or 1990's houses.
            modifying is more expensive, in most cases, than knock-down, rebuild. So, next person might live in your house, but the one after than will almost certainly be knocking it down.

            Many 1930's houses are still in liveable, if not good, condition.
            Many are ready for the bulldozer.

            --
            "I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 25 2017, @01:40PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 25 2017, @01:40PM (#499283)

              Ah - ok. Not straw. Sticks ;)

              Everything in Britain is built from bricks, and is built to last. And not even any big bad wolves here!

              Houses in britain are sold as either freehold (normal, own the house) or leasehold (you own a mostly-rent-free right to live in the house for X years). X used to be about 99, but many people got upset at how short that was, so it's commonly 999 now.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 24 2017, @09:20PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 24 2017, @09:20PM (#499051)

      Wood-frame housing stands up to earthquakes well when compared to other building methods.

      I wonder if these folks have a formula for those of us on the Pacific Rim, considering the Magnitude 7 events that have pancaked [google.com] concrete structures [google.com] in these parts.
      ...and a configuration that will withstand the Magnitude 8 event that we get every 150 years or so (we're overdue) would be awesome.

      -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

      • (Score: 0, Redundant) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday April 24 2017, @10:36PM

        by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Monday April 24 2017, @10:36PM (#499078) Homepage

        If a disaster were to hit San Francisco, I'd rather it be a lethal disease outbreak brought in by refugees and immigrants granted sanctuary by the city -- for it would be a shame if all that classic architecture were destroyed in a quake. The population not so much.

      • (Score: 2) by butthurt on Tuesday April 25 2017, @04:28AM

        by butthurt (6141) on Tuesday April 25 2017, @04:28AM (#499144) Journal

        Communities composed entirely of Styrofoam™ are already a reality in progressively minded Japan.

        [...] models tested by the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) did not merely meet earthquake standards; they remained fully intact after being shaken harder than the strongest earthquakes ever recorded.

        -- https://www.nachi.org/styrofoam-homes.htm [nachi.org]

    • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday April 25 2017, @06:21AM

      by kaszz (4211) on Tuesday April 25 2017, @06:21AM (#499159) Journal

      Architecture got bad reputation because all too often they design houses that look like concrete boxes and is hostile to their inhabitants. Complete lack of reality connect (just like some other professions).

  • (Score: 2) by ilsa on Monday April 24 2017, @06:15PM (9 children)

    by ilsa (6082) Subscriber Badge on Monday April 24 2017, @06:15PM (#498972)

    Small houses like described in the article are relatively simple since the entire house can be built one layer at a time, and can be contained within the printer housing, just like conventional 3d printers.

    What I want to know is what happens when you want to build a house that is too big to fit inside the printer. Most people with enough land to build a house are going to want something larger than 38m^2. That's basically just a really big hut.

    I personally wouldn't be happy in a house less than 100m^2. I like a little distance between the area where I cook and where I poop.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 24 2017, @06:23PM (6 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 24 2017, @06:23PM (#498976)

      Yeah, that thing looks tiny. I'm certain I've seen tents bigger than that.

      Made we wonder if the ideal medium for these printers is terrafoam.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 24 2017, @06:30PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 24 2017, @06:30PM (#498983)

        Do I smell Manna?

      • (Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Monday April 24 2017, @06:35PM (4 children)

        by dyingtolive (952) on Monday April 24 2017, @06:35PM (#498984)

        The size is a little small, but I don't honestly think it's horrible. It's 38 square meters according to the website, which is about 400 square feet. I have roughly twice that in my current townhouse that I share with my girlfriend. I don't have a ton of stuff, but I probably could fit into it if I was single. Stack two of these on top of each other with stairs or side by side with some sort of hallway and you should have a reasonably livable space for a couple or small family even.

        Plus I think they look cool.

        --
        Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 24 2017, @06:45PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 24 2017, @06:45PM (#498992)

          >girlfriend

          iTriggered.

          >400 square feet

          Land tax not affordable under UBI. Tube living recommended.

          • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 24 2017, @06:51PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 24 2017, @06:51PM (#498995)

            Girlfriend? Tube living? I live under a bridge and my girlfriend is a radio personality on a billboard. I've never heard her voice because I don't have a radio.

        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by DECbot on Monday April 24 2017, @08:08PM (1 child)

          by DECbot (832) on Monday April 24 2017, @08:08PM (#499029) Journal

          When $kids >= 2, you'll start looking for houses over 2000 ft² (185 m²). Each kid needs about 250 ft² that is non-overlapping with the other kids' territories to keep the screaming to a minimum. And you need the additional 1500 ft² for the feeding facilities, hygiene enforcement rooms, exercise room with audio-visual stimulus box (preferably you'll have two of these rooms to avoid arguments of what is playing on said stimulus box), and housing for the onsite parental units. The alternative is typically high-density child housing paired with free-range child rearing. Yet, in today's atmosphere of nosy helicopter parent neighbors, that will likely result in interference from the local federal enforcement agency.

          --
          cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
          • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday April 24 2017, @09:06PM

            by Grishnakh (2831) on Monday April 24 2017, @09:06PM (#499048)

            These alternatives are too unattainable or undesirable for much of the population now.

            "Child-free" rearing, as you say, will likely get you in trouble with CPS if not actual jail time like the guy in LA recently who was convicted of child endangerment and imprisoned for making his kid walk 1 mile home as a punishment.

            Having a proper amount of space inside to avoid the legal problems will cost at least $1M in a desirable area (one where you can get a job).

            The answer is simple: don't have kids. Our society actively punishes you for having kids, so the simple solution is to just not have any. Eventually, this problem will correct itself.

    • (Score: 2) by Rivenaleem on Tuesday April 25 2017, @09:35AM (1 child)

      by Rivenaleem (3400) on Tuesday April 25 2017, @09:35AM (#499205)

      I wonder if you could make a bunch of these in close proximity and link them together to make a larger house. And I'm certain you can make them in a variety of shapes, or make part, then move the printer, and make more, to get an overall larger structure. This is how much they made in a day. Give them a week and I'm sure they can build something far more substantial.

      • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday April 25 2017, @01:23PM

        by Immerman (3985) on Tuesday April 25 2017, @01:23PM (#499274)

        You could probably even coordinate multiple adjacent arms working simultaneously so that the walls all went up at the same speed and there would be no "intersection issues" where the support arm printing the base of section 2 needs to pass through the space already occupied by the upper portions of section 1.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 24 2017, @06:28PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 24 2017, @06:28PM (#498979)

    As predicted in a Culture fan film.

    Something Real [youtube.com]

    Kasta (a drone) and Reydon (a human) are friends.

    Kasta: "Why not build a house like I did?"
    Reydon: "Yeah as I recall it took you a whole day."
    Kasta: "... well ..."
    Reydon: "And did you feel satisfied afterwards?"
    Kasta: "No not really. I just knocked it down and built it again."
    Reydon: "Exactly. In your own twisted way, you got something out of it a second time."
    Kasta: "I got a patio."

    While a house represents shelter to a human, a drone treats a house (with patio!) as nothing more than a toy.

  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Monday April 24 2017, @06:58PM (1 child)

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Monday April 24 2017, @06:58PM (#498998)

    Home Depot (believe it or not) sells a double car garage thats stretched for workbench / storage / garden stuff for $11000 and I suspect without the door and framing you could squirt that out for $10K. Home Depot is legendarily expensive for stuff like roof installation. Anyway 30x40 feet is about 110 sq meters if I did the math right in my head.

    The article says 3D printed house was only 38 sq meters.

    So its a good deal cheaper to go stamped steel kit. Something I like about the stamped steel kit is a short line "Stamped engineering drawings and calculations". Somehow I don't think the 3-d printed house has that option. It would be fascinating in my city trying to get an occupancy permit without that.

    Note that a lot of architectural bullshit goes on houses. I like the idea of 3-d printing stuff installed in and outside of my steel hut that make it look like a hobbit house or a little mcmansion or maybe a castle or who knows what. As long as its not too expensive, not structural, and doesn't exceed the engineered loadings I'll be happy.

    • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday April 25 2017, @01:32PM

      by Immerman (3985) on Tuesday April 25 2017, @01:32PM (#499280)

      Except the printed home is well insulated, including the windows and doors, fairly sound-proof, far more solid, and it sounds like that $10k might include the TV, counters, etc, etc, etc, inside as well.

      There's also no inherent impediment for "pre-stamped engineering drawings" with printed construction - easy enough to get a selection of different popular designs pre-stamped to select among, and just squirt out the one you want on-site. Custom designs would obviously more expensive by the cost of engineering and certification, but there's potentially room for the structural components to be pre-stamped, with more cosmetic customizations (internal unloaded walls, counters, etc.) to be added in without needing approval.

  • (Score: 2) by FakeBeldin on Monday April 24 2017, @07:45PM

    by FakeBeldin (3360) on Monday April 24 2017, @07:45PM (#499021) Journal

    In the related videos, there's this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SObzNdyRTBs [youtube.com]. It's a Chinese program that claims they build 10 3d printed houses in 24 hours. Each of those looks comparable in area to the house the American company printed.

    The Chinese video was uploaded in April 2014. It's nice to see America is making such innovative steps forward :)

    Well, to paraphrase one of the video's comments, at least 3d printing in the US of A is becoming useful for things other than creating weapons.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Dunbal on Monday April 24 2017, @08:23PM

    by Dunbal (3515) on Monday April 24 2017, @08:23PM (#499037)

    But I'm pretty sure that honeycombing concrete doesn't make up for the fact that there's no rebar in the walls in an earthquake zone...

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by choose another one on Monday April 24 2017, @08:26PM

    by choose another one (515) Subscriber Badge on Monday April 24 2017, @08:26PM (#499038)

    Construction is cheap - even old-style bricks and mortar.

    Land to put it on is the expensive bit - anywhere that people actually want to live, building plots are very expensive. The cost of the actual build is, by my reckoning, 25% or less of the total price of a house. Where I am (long way from london) building plots (small, for single detached 4 bed house) go for 400k - not much point in only spending 10k for the house on it.

    Buckingham palace might cost £320m to build new, but it's _worth_ (based on sq ft property prices in the area) somewhere over £2.2bn. The land it is on would add even more to that if approved for development. So the total saving, even if this method could build a buckingham palace replica, would only be around 10% - probably not enough to risk experimental construction.

  • (Score: 2) by MostCynical on Monday April 24 2017, @09:42PM

    by MostCynical (2589) on Monday April 24 2017, @09:42PM (#499058) Journal

    These guys do "cheap", with all cut-outs for all electrical, lighting, plumbing etc conduits included. Means the owner has to actually design every aspect of the house before they start cutting, but the rest of the tradesmen can do everything far faster.
    The precision is far better than the 3d thing, too.

    http://facit-homes.com/clients/celia-diana [facit-homes.com]
    https://vimeo.com/53932758 [vimeo.com]

    --
    "I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
  • (Score: 1) by tedd on Tuesday April 25 2017, @05:32AM (1 child)

    by tedd (1691) on Tuesday April 25 2017, @05:32AM (#499152)

    So: 3D printing the palace would save over a HALF BILLION DOLLARS!

    You do realise we already have one. Therefore, 3D printing another palace would WASTE half a billion..

    • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday April 25 2017, @06:39AM

      by kaszz (4211) on Tuesday April 25 2017, @06:39AM (#499164) Journal

      Don't worry, the Chinese will probably make one just for fun..
      Complete with guards.

  • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday April 25 2017, @06:36AM

    by kaszz (4211) on Tuesday April 25 2017, @06:36AM (#499163) Journal

    It seems the cost is less than 10 000 US$ for the actual 3D printing of concrete:
          Foundation - 277 US$
            Walls - 1624 US$
    It totals at 1901 US$. I wonder if that's concrete + machine rent or just concrete.

    Anyway. What is missing is what the roof is made of. Is that concrete too? or some other material?

    I'll suppose melted Mars dust and 3D-printing will probably be the thing to use for Musk to do the habitat "over there". That way it can be completed before arrival and use materials on site.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 25 2017, @02:30PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 25 2017, @02:30PM (#499305)

    -- MAFIAA

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 25 2017, @06:29PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 25 2017, @06:29PM (#499470)

      'Cause why would we want to print a copy of YOU?

  • (Score: 2) by steveha on Tuesday April 25 2017, @07:38PM

    by steveha (4100) on Tuesday April 25 2017, @07:38PM (#499513)

    I read through several of their web pages and watched their YouTube video.

    The house is round basically so they can show off. It can build a square house just as easily.

    They built it during the winter. The concrete needs a certain minimum temperature to set properly, and winter is colder than that, but they simply set up a big tent with the machine inside and the machine built the house no problem. (Maybe they ran a heater inside the tent? They didn't say.)

    The 3D printing concrete is strong enough that walls don't need reinforcements. I like how the walls are designed: there is a sine curve running between the inner and outer walls, 3D printed of course; kind of like corrugated cardboard but done in concrete. Should be strong! Then the hollow parts of the wall get insulation added (foam insulation or loose-fill insulation; they used both in this house, I'm not sure why).

    The roof is flat, and they say it can bear the weight of snow that might accumulate on it. I'm really not sure why they went with a flat roof though.

    I was trying to figure out how the house is heated and/or cooled. The page just says there is a built-in climate control system. Frustratingly I didn't find an actual floor plan of the house. I'm going to guess that the insulation is so good it can work like a passive house [wikipedia.org] so the actual climate control could be one small heat pump vented into the living room. (The web page says "number of chambers: 6" and we know of a living room and a bathroom, so presumably there are some closets or something and a heat pump could be in there?) The web page says "frost resistance: -60 C" and that is a colder temperature than I ever hope to experience.

    With about 400 square feet (38 square metres) I guess you eat and sleep in the living room, and the washing machine is in the bathroom.

    If this company had a branch near me, I'd be tempted to buy a bit of land somewhere really remote, and have them build a 400 square foot vacation home on it for me. $10K for the whole house! It shows a washing machine... is there actually plumbing and it's all hooked up? The cost breakdown has a line item for "wiring" but nothing for "plumbing" which makes me suspicious. Still, even if this house doesn't have plumbing, the next one could.

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