
A $10K tiny house 3D-printed in 24 hours - yurisagalov
http://apis-cor.com/en/about/news/first-house
======
milesf
I'm so surprised that people have not heard of the late R.G. LeTourneau. The
man was a mechanical genius, and the father of modern earth moving machinery.

Here's a video of his Concrete House Machine from 1946:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpWjyZO2lPU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpWjyZO2lPU)

This was 70 years ago! I read about them in his autobiography "Mover of Men
and Mountains". He went with concrete because it was cooler in the summer, and
warmer in the winter. Seems to me the "Not Invented Here" mentality has been
around for a very long time.

~~~
Animats
The idea goes back even further, to Edison in 1908.[1] His system used a large
set of metal molds which latched together to make a house-sized mold. Then
just pour in the concrete and go. The houses were quite elaborate, with lots
of architectural detail, all the way down to bathtubs and picture frames. A
few are still around.

There's no problem mass producing concrete houses. Or apartment buildings.
Building shells aren't really that expensive. The interior parts cost more.

[1] [http://www.concreteconstruction.net/_view-
object?id=00000153...](http://www.concreteconstruction.net/_view-
object?id=00000153-968d-dbf3-a177-96bdeb600000)

~~~
Lazare
>Building shells aren't really that expensive. The interior parts cost more.

And land in a desirable location with a building permit costs even more, if
it's even available.

~~~
branchless
Can't beleieve I had to scroll this far down. Land prices in urban areas are
set by ability to pay, so with cheaper construction you can pay even more to
the land owneer! Prices won't fall in urban centres one cent.

The problem of expensive housing is man-made: by bakers lending enough fiat
credit to match your surplus value.

~~~
sokoloff
If land prices are set by ability to pay (rather than willingness to pay),
that could be a good thing for buyers.

A reasonable model for the seller is to sell to the highest willing buyer.
Each individual purchaser has an ability to pay and willingness to pay and
will presumably only offer the lower of those two prices.

If land trades on ability to pay rather than willingness, that means that the
highest bidder would have been _willing_ to pay more but was only _able_ to
pay what they settled on, and I don't see a significant problem. The buyer is
presumably quite happy, having paid less than they were willing to pay.

The chief downsides I see in such a system is that either the buyer is not
actually able to pay (they misjudge their ability to pay), or for the non-
buyers who are out-bid by other buyers with a greater ability to pay. (It
could be frustrating to only be able to pay $X while land or properties change
hands at 1.5 * $X, but no reasonable seller will sell for 2/3 the market
price, so...)

~~~
branchless
> If land trades on ability to pay rather than willingness,

Banks create fiat on request for a loan. It's infinite. You have to bid all
your surplus value or someone else will, either a dweller or a speculator.

~~~
sokoloff
That still means that you were willing to bid that much, right?

I've bought two homes in my life. In neither case did I bid all my available
funds and in both cases, I got a house that served very well as my home.
(There were several other houses I bid on over the years where I didn't get
the property. Two cases were bank REOs where the bank was unreasonable, IMO.
Two other cases I was simply outbid. Life goes on.)

~~~
branchless
You were forced to bid more than others who were willing to bid as much as
they can. That is where the price tops out. If you have more money than them
you still had to pledge more of your labour because bankers extended loose
credit.

Life does go on. And we have to work for longer for the exact same pile of
bricks than our parents because of the changes in banking, gold std and the
tech enabling tracking vast quantities of digital fiat credit.

------
saeranv
A lot of people are commenting (correctly) that any cost savings achieved here
are trivial relative to the land cost. I think this is looking at this tech
too narrowly though. There are many areas of architecture that can be
revolutionized by cheap, accurate mass-customization.

One example would be energy. Right now heat transfer and the transmission of
daylight through walls/windows can be theoretically optimized to reduce energy
costs simply by customizing the geometry of the windows and walls relative to
their orientation and local context. We don't do so in architecture because
the costs of customizing the geometry is too expensive. Architecture has a
history of attempting mass-customization since the 1960s[1], but it's always
been limited by the technology and realities of integrating multiple
subcontractors and consultants. Those problems still exist, but the industry
is changing pretty fast and I feel automated form generation, simulation,
optimization, and production technologies are converging to a point when this
could be achieved.

[1] i.e John Habraken.

~~~
thomasfl
The price of land is much lower if the entrepreneur goes big and build a whole
new town from scratch. There are however some challenges with this approach.
None the less, it's being done all the time in Asia.

~~~
throwaway40483
The "build it and they'll come" approach to planned cities never seems to work
out. It looks like a city has to form organically to be viable.

~~~
r00fus
Where has it failed? China has a lot of cities currently empty, but many are
being populated slowly.

China building unoccupied cities has more to do with the fact that the average
Chinese citizen is not allowed to speculate or invest in much other than real-
estate.

~~~
umsm
Like you mention, there are many almost empty cities, also called ghost
cities. You can also argue that they are slowly being populated, but that
doesn't equate with success.

They failed in that there was a huge investment to build them, but the
expectations for these cities were never met. Additionally, there is
tremendous upkeep or maintenance.

For example, those new roads are crumbling and require extensive repair work.
Think of a road that is 5 lanes wide, but a 1 lane would suffice to serve all
of the traffic. The unused portion will still degrade, even though it's not
used.

It's kinda like buying a huge house before having children. You still need to
fix, maintain and clean the extra square footage, even though it's not used.

------
orless
I think this should be primarily interesting for buildings with special form
which are hard or expensive to build with traditional methods. The price is
not the selling point here, at least not in Russia. Russia has a lot of cheap
labor from the southern ex-USSR countries like Tadjikistan. So $10k for 38qm
is not really cheap. You can build a 150qm two-floor house for around $25k.
Also $277 for the foundation seems a bit suspicious, should be much more
expensive.

"the radius of curvature of the TV matches the house wall curvature" pretty
much looks like a PR stunt for Samsung. I wonder if they've actually chosen
curved walls to somehow justify curved TV.

~~~
ghostly_s
Yes, if those figures are converted to USD (I presume so as they're using the
'$' sign without specification?), then they are so manipulated as to be
worthless. There is no way to pour a foundation, even a small one, for $277.

I agree the formal implications are the interesting aspect. Creating an
exactly equivalent design, with curved walls everywhere, would be phenomenally
expensive with conventional practices.

~~~
jacquesm
> Creating an exactly equivalent design, with curved walls everywhere, would
> be phenomenally expensive with conventional practices.

You could easily make a house with round walls today if you wished to do so.
But you wouldn't because you'd curse yourself every day when you want to place
furniture and lay floor coverings.

Curved spaces seem like a good idea until you actually try to use them.

~~~
taneq
Hell, even non-square spaces (or spaces composed of non-right angles) are a
pain in the ass to effectively use. My old place had a main living area with a
few 45 degree angles, and it really limited what you could do with it unless
you were willing to lose several square meters of floor space.

------
ChuckMcM
I find the notion of 3D printing a house intriguing but it seems ultimately
impractical. There are better ways to manufacture homes that can be
componentized and transported for final assembly on site. One where I visited
the factory was the BluHomes[1]. You can automate much of the construction of
walls and wiring and finishing if you do it in sections.

[1] [https://www.bluhomes.com/](https://www.bluhomes.com/)

~~~
bane
Prefab houses have been around forever. I grew up in one. I think my parents
paid about $100k in 1989. The construction was:

\- dig a hole

\- pour a foundation

\- truck in the house in two halves

\- bolt the house together

\- do final wiring, plumbing

move the family in

I have no idea how much these kinds of homes are today, but their latest
zillow zesitmate puts it at around $300k (on an acre of property)...so YMMV.

3d printing, in general, is expensive and better for one-off, or low-volume
things. Mass manufacture techniques are hyper-optimized and beat 3d printing
most of the time when you need to make >10 of the thing almost every
time...this includes houses.

~~~
Seanny123
After a quick search on prefabricated homes and reading the Wikipedia article,
I'm really not clear on what their limitations are. Most of them seem
optimized for warmer weather? I would really appreciate some links describing
the current state of prefab housing and it's practicality.

~~~
Animats
The basic limitation is how wide a load you can move by road and rail. That
usually limits you to a double-wide house.

There's panelized construction, which is like IKEA for houses. This works
reasonably well for rectangular houses. The joints can be a weak point, both
structurally and as leak points.[1] Plumbing, wiring, and interior walls are
best done at the factory, but that makes the connections complicated.

If you're willing to have exposed bolts and joints, it's easier. Butler
Buildings makes industrial buildings and barns from prefab panels of
corrugated steel. Those buildings are everywhere in rural America. They're
strong, they go up fast, they can be purchased with insulated panels, and they
last a long time. You can even get a fake brick exterior and a nice interior.
But the result will look industrial.

[1]
[http://www.huduser.gov/portal/Publications/PDF/path_panel_co...](http://www.huduser.gov/portal/Publications/PDF/path_panel_conntn_report.pdf)

~~~
dragonwriter
> The basic limitation is how wide a load you can move by road and rail. That
> usually limits you to a double-wide house

It limits the size of the individual module, but I've seen an entire
multistory, city-block-size apartment complex built up from trucked in
modules; limiting the size of the prefabricated modules doesn't meaningfully
limit the size of the final building.

~~~
tonyarkles
It's amazing to watch! There was a row of townhouses like that put up near my
old house. They had a crane and a steady stream of trucks bringing in the
modules. Truck shows up, two guys put straps around the module and hook it to
the crane. When I was watching, they were on the second storey, so there were
two guys on the roof that helped the crane operator drop them in place. Take
the straps off, throw them down to the ground, and repeat.

Pretty incredible watching the entire storey of a block worth of townhouses
being assembled in an afternoon.

------
Flammy
Discussion on reddit from 2 days ago:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/5xf7sf/a_russia...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/5xf7sf/a_russian_company_just_3d_printed_a_400/)

Apparently the $10k includes electrical, windows, etc.

~~~
anotheryou
Thanks! I was already thinking that 4 people with a bunch of bricks can
quickly raise a wall too.

edit: 2 people, 7h (including a 40min break), one wall:
[https://youtu.be/gSM70WGbTiA?t=25](https://youtu.be/gSM70WGbTiA?t=25) This is
what the innovative part of the project is competing against.

~~~
IgorPartola
Laying brick is very quick. And if you are willing to do a full brick width as
the wall thickness, you don't really need much further insulation IIRC. Stick
built houses are not as durable and take longer, but as long as wood and labor
are cheap, they will be popular. Drywall is also cheap, though takes multiple
passes to finish.

Personally if I was constructing my home with my own hands, I would go for
brick.

~~~
hasbot
Even better/faster than brick is dry stacked concrete blocks:
[http://www.drystacked.com/index.html](http://www.drystacked.com/index.html)

~~~
jacquesm
But ugly.

~~~
hasbot
Not necessarily. Dry-stacked blocks require surface adhesion which can be
dressed up anyway you want (e.g. smoothed and painted, make to look like
stucco, etc).

------
donald123
This is not new. China already has company that can 3D print a real two-story
house. See this [https://3dprint.com/138664/huashang-tengda-3d-print-
house/](https://3dprint.com/138664/huashang-tengda-3d-print-house/)

This article also mentioned another Chinese competitor can 3d-print 6-story
apartment and a mansion.

~~~
dear
Another one here:

[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/video/2014/apr/29/3d-...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/video/2014/apr/29/3d-printer-
builds-houses-china-video)

------
djaychela
While this is clearly an impressive technical feat, I can't help thinking of
the carbon footprint of creating a house out of concrete, which is notoriously
un-environmentally friendly, and difficult to deal with when the structure is
no longer required. Hopefully a more environmentally-sound material will be
used. There's not a single mention on that page of the carbon footprint of the
building method used, and I think it would be interesting to compare
physically identical (as much as possible) buildings of different construction
(3d printed like this, bricks and mortar, pre-fab wooden/osb panels, etc),
particularly when the tag line of the article is:

"We Are Building the Future Today."

~~~
MayeulC
It is an interesting fact that concrete itself is a carbon sink, and that it
mitigates a bit the emissions associated with its production.

That said, I agree that it would be interesting to have a _independent_ study
of the complete environmental impact of such a building, from its erection to
its disposal.

I would instinctively expect a smaller impact from this kind of "lean"
approach, though this might also create problems due to the economy of scale
not necessarily being present.

------
dbg31415
Cool tech, but...

Curved walls only look good from the outside. Design looks like something
someone who has never built a house before drew up. Things like a sofa that
can't face the TV screen, or ostensibly a bathroom that you have to walk
through the bedroom to get to.

Also everything looks very narrow. I want to see them build a real house this
way, something with full-sized doors (36"), full-sized washers and dryers,
something with 2 levels, something with actual electrical outlets (I see none
in the video or pictures).

I can slap together a shed without plumbing or electricity in a day. Boasting
about the price, showing electrical appliances, but not including the
electrical wiring... let's be kind and just call that some "optimistic
marketing." I mean... It doesn't even look like they have a real foundation...
And small point... if they are going for speed, why are they using a roller to
apply paint? Spray would do a better job and cut the painting time more than
50%.

~~~
Eridrus
Here's a video of them making a larger more traditional structure:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViqzfPW6TFo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViqzfPW6TFo)

Though part of the point is that you can use this to make more complicated
structures with less effort and error; whether they are always appropriate is
sort of a separate question.

I think they have included wiring costs based on comments here & on reddit,
though their site seems to be down after the HN hug.

Personally I'm more interested in modular construction than 3d printing since
it's much clearer how you scale that up to larger buildings, but this is still
neat.

~~~
dbg31415
I don't see any electrical outlets in the photos or videos.

I also don't see the cost of the foundation included... looks like they built
on top of an existing concrete slab but didn't add that into the cost. I don't
want to rip on them too much, but if they start talking about time and cost
(literally as the headline) and they aren't being honest about what it really
costs... it's hard to trust anything else about the article.

Can it even be called a "house" without a heater? I mean... they aren't
following any sort of industrialized nation building code at all here. No
sinks, no bathrooms (can't tell), no insulation in the roof, no smoke
alarms... Calling it a "house" and bragging about the time it takes to build
and cost... it's moot if it's not really a house. That's all I'm getting at.

~~~
Sanddancer
Bottom of the page gives the cost of the foundation -- $277. It also does have
an insulated roof, heating, a sink, a bathroom, etc. Electrical, they probably
used a wall chaser/cutter to put a groove in to lay the conduit, which was
covered when they surfaced the wall. Finish work like that is really similar
regardless of the house, and is not really different from what you'd do with a
brick surface, etc.

~~~
nickodell
$277 seems suspiciously cheap. A google suggests that should cost $5/sq foot,
or $2000 for this house.

~~~
Sanddancer
This was done in Russia where labor costs are a lot lower. Most construction
workers make a fifth of what they make in the states, and I imagine related
costs are also lower. So probably a lowball figure, but plausible.

------
skookumchuck
Around here houses are still built on site, stick by stick. The only things
built off site are the roof trusses.

I don't understand why all the walls, at least, aren't built in a warehouse
and then trucked in. It could be built cheaper, more precise, with far less
wastage. Holes for electrical, plumbing and HVAC could be already put in. Even
windows can be pre-installed.

(I know that part of the problem is architects under-design houses, leaving it
up to the contractors to figure out how to route electrical, plumbing and HVAC
on-site.)

~~~
jfroma
Same here, there are pre-built houses but they are ugly. It is even forbidden
in some neighborhoods to put a pre-built houses.

I guess this is just because there is no company doing it properly and maybe
no market for it.

~~~
skookumchuck
There's no reason the factory cannot build walls for custom houses. The jigs
and all will be computer controlled, anyway. Nor does that imply cheaply built
or poor materials.

It's got to be an industry ripe for disruption.

~~~
Broken_Hippo
Exactly. They already do custom roof trusses in factories along with standard
sizes.

------
dahart
What is the outcome of housing this cheap? This is one more option in a
growing list that includes inflatable concrete structures, and Tumbleweed
houses, prefab cabins, etc etc.

Is this cheap enough to house people in third world countries. Probably not
yet, but could it be on the way? And I'm sure construction costs aren't even
the primary economic factor to solve...

Is it possible this trend could make vacation housing for affluent people
disposable?

I love the idea of having a tiny house or even two I can move around, but I
suspect, knowing me, that it wouldn't get used and would take more maintenance
than I'm really truly interested in.

~~~
Lazare
Building houses cheaply is largely a solved problem, and offhand I don't see
any particular reason to think this is actually any cheaper than techniques
that have been around for decades, in terms of producing a practical finished
dwelling.

If you want to house a lot of people cheaply, build a big, ugly apartment
building. Or twenty. No big deal. The cost comes from the fixtures, finishing,
the land, and (most especially, in desirable areas) the building permits.

This is _cool_ , but it's hard to see what problem it's solving.

~~~
pascalxus
this house is much more cost effective. Here in CA, it's hard to build a house
for less than 200$ per square foot (either due to laws or local labor
conditions) - not even including land and permit cost.

~~~
Lazare
> either due to laws

Right. If it was legal to build tiny, cheap houses, you could build tiny,
cheap houses, including using this tech. But since it isn't, you can't.

The issue with housing in the bay area is __NOT __, by any possible stretch of
the imagination, that it 's technically challenging to make small, crude
houses cheaply enough.

Plus:

> not even including land and permit cost.

But you do need the land and the permit. And once you have those, why not
build a nice house? It's sensible to try and use the scarcest resource most
efficiently, and in coastal CA, the scarcest resource is neither building
materials nor labour.

------
mschuster91
I have a slight feeling that this won't become very widespread on Earth -
simply put, the thing is too small to be able to construct a house larger than
a typical 1-family house.

However, taking such a thing and sending it up to Mars or the Moon, now
there's a potential for "real" prefabricated housing.

~~~
brianwawok
Why couldn't you use 3 or 4 of them to make a larger house? Seems like as long
as it can print your largest room you are Golden.

------
theon144
Oh man, I'd sure like me some Samsung Nano Crystal Color Revolutionary Super
Ultra High Definition TV and a Samsung refrigerator with No Frost system, a
Samsung induction stove, Samsung dishwashing machine, Samsung electrical oven,
and maybe even a Samsung microwave oven. Not to forget the innovative Samsung
AddWash washing machine.

I wonder why that is.

~~~
logfromblammo
At last! A house-sized 3D printer that automates product placement as easily
as wall placement.

------
bigbugbag
At first it seemed to me to be expensive for a little not really practical
house to live in. Then I figured out this is a tech demo and PR stunt and not
an attempt to make affordable housing for people to live in.

I wonder how this compare to a yurt or straw bale construction.

~~~
adevine
But with this technology it seems like it would be straightforward to build a
slightly larger, more practical house. Though I agree, I think building a
house with at least one actual bedroom would have made a better demo.

------
chjohasbrouck
I'd be surprised if this house meets state regulations for residential
construction in any US state.

That'll be one of the biggest obstacles to 3D printed housing in the US. Even
if you somehow get efficiency gains through 3D printing, it's going to require
a different configuration depending on the regulatory environment, which
varies by nation and state and county and city and topography, and changes
every year.

These regulations affect every detail of the construction of your house, from
the foundation to the window panes. Even details as innocuous as sink depth
are regulated.

~~~
microcolonel
If you open the link, you'll note that this is in Russia; a lawless land where
the government is constantly struggling to prove that you can run a business
which isn't gazprom.

~~~
lucaspiller
Europe is also relatively lax in terms of building regulations, it's only the
North America which is hung up on having a rule for every little thing.

~~~
XJOKOLAT
I'd beg to differ. From personal experience, in the UK you cannot breathe
without getting planning permission.

Although, these days, not sure whether to legitimately include UK as part of a
European discussion, sadly.

~~~
lucaspiller
Yeah I'd agree about planning permission, but inside you can do pretty much
what you like without issue. The US has rules such as the number and type of
sockets you need to have in closets.

~~~
XJOKOLAT
Holy crap, fair play. That would drive me insane.

------
ryankupyn
This is really cool, but I'd love to know how durable a printed house is over
the long term. Right now though, I think that there's a profitable niche for
this sort of portable and low-labor-intensity construction in the defence and
disaster-relief fields, where speed and cost are a higher priority than
aesthetics.

I could easily see the US government (or rather, their contractors) using this
technology when constructing bases overseas, especially in places in
Afghanistan where workers don't just need to be paid, but fed, housed and
transported at great expense.

------
SnowingXIV
I'm working on buying land some land and building a house right now. The
prices for a typical traditional way of building a house aren't that
astronomical. I looked into some prefab but for a split entry or two story
it's pretty hard to bring my costs down much lower.

I wish I could get my land prepped and then print it out cheap or dropped off
but haven't found anything that can get me to the price point I want with
~2500 sqft other than doing the typical way.

------
Keverw
Oh wow, pretty neat and surprised it took just 24 hours. For some reason it
reminds me a bit of the Monsanto House of the Future at Disneyland. I wasn't
even born yet when they took it down, but randomly found videos of it on
YouTube once. But it was a whole house made of plastic. Probably molded I'd
guess since they didn't have 3D printers back then.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qUkNZ5aJWE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qUkNZ5aJWE)

------
rootsudo
Amazing.

Concrete is also amazing. I can't believe how wood and stick frame took over
traditional housing methods.

~~~
phamilton
Earthquakes

------
sandworm101
Carpenters roofers painters and plumbers are safe. This "printed house" seems
to have required lots of hands. It is also so small that any reasonable team
of humans could have built it in as short a time.

A better approach would be to have the robot print the concrete forms,
allowing for humans to erect and fill them on the site. That might actually
save on manpower.

~~~
2muchcoffeeman
Right, I don't see them bringing this machine on site and having it print
something.

You have to move materials on site anyway, so I bet they simply prefab modular
components and then assemble somewhere else.

They just want to show they can build any shape and even take electrical and
plumbing into account as they build.

~~~
VLM
There is the technological achievement that not too many years ago most
concrete came in trucks and was wheelbarrowed by hand and leg into forms. Then
came the era of boom trucks where a crane like machine squirts out of a hose
into prepared form. The logical extension is getting rid of the prepared
forms. That's what this technology demonstrator shows.

I agree the "any shape" aspect is key in that they're probably going to do
more engineering and repair work than anything else. So dig up a sidewalk for
a repair they'll print in place a new sidewalk faster than someone can build a
sidewalk form, minimal as that is, after all a sidewalk is pretty small
compared to an entire house LOL. Or your cellphone tower taken out by tornado
they'll print a foundation for a backup tower as fast as rebar can get tossed
in, sit a couple hours, toss a tower on the foundation, and you're back on the
air. Or exotic repairs to civil engineering accidents, maybe that dam in CA
needs a herd of 3-d printers to make a new spillway faster than they could
even construct the forms. This also might come in handy with tunnel boring
machines, rather than making pre-made panels fit, you could print panels to
fit the as dug hole, which is interesting to think about.

The CivEng side of the conversation with the concrete factory probably sounds
like: There's some damage, we're not even sure how bad it is yet, no obviously
we haven't built a form we haven't even hauled out the big rubble yet the
crane just got started, OK send out your 3d printer to patch, we should be
done demolishing and hauling out the broken chunks by the time your truck
arrives.

Even better if they can print nicely enough to make it residential grade
appearance, perhaps they can patch things to look nice, not merely be
physically strong enough.

------
kriro
"""The construction cost of the printed house amounted to $10134, which is
approximately $275 per square meter, taking in account that partners have
provided the highest quality materials"""

Due to the wording of the sentence I'm not sure if the material is included in
the calculation or not. But assuming prices going down and technology
improving a building like that for 10-20k in 24h is an interesting proposition
for on demand housing (even if it is just destroyed afterwards). Embedded
sponsoring by Samsung aside I think the wall printed to match the curvature of
the TV is an interesting example. This could be interesting for
events/marketing booths etc.

Edit: This could also be very interesting for Hollywood for set building :)

------
Spooky23
Looks cheap to build, impossible to modify or fix.

~~~
Turing_Machine
Yeah, that's typically the case with concrete construction. :-)

------
jmspring
Tiny houses are great and all, but most articles, tv shows, etc two basic
issues:

\- land \- hookups

Had this discussion today with someone enthused about a tiny home community
until the land use rental fee came into play.

------
ensiferum
Anyone read the short science fiction (soon to be non-fiction) story Manna.

Is this the prototype of cheap "terrafoam" housing for the poor ppl displaced
from the society? ;)

------
rodionos
Awesome! Finally, Flintstone on HWY 280 will have some competition
[http://www.flintstonehouse280.com/](http://www.flintstonehouse280.com/)

I can see artsy architects thinking up a whole new range of designs that
escape the constraints imposed by established manufacturing and construction
practices. Probably not as much not for permanent habitat, but for a garage,
or a playhouse for kids.

------
orless
Video of the process:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViqzfPW6TFo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViqzfPW6TFo)

~~~
closed
That was the first video I've ever had to play at 6x its original speed!

------
amelius
Related: This House Costs Just $20,000—But It’s Nicer Than Yours [1]

[1] [https://www.fastcoexist.com/3056129/this-house-costs-
just-20...](https://www.fastcoexist.com/3056129/this-house-costs-
just-20000-but-its-nicer-than-yours)

------
wiz21c
Given the fact that climate change is the big deal, how much _energy_ did it
take to actually build such a house versus the energy needed by a regular
brick & mortar & human workers house ?

~~~
tpaschalis
Well, I suppose it's not meant to replace traditional building
methods/materials, but as it gets better, imagine the usability of such tech
eg. for building a base on the moon.

------
alexro
Print the walls and let this guy to do the rest
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_Uoq6JYKbw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_Uoq6JYKbw)

------
loa_in_
Too bad that the article doesn't mention any electrical nor water/sewage
installation. No wonder the appliances are depicted turned off.

------
london888
Great but I dont think it's the walls and roof that take time usually. It's
the planning consent, foundations, utilities and internals.

------
jedberg
When people say, "All the manufacturing has gone to China!" show them this
video, and say, "No, they've gone to robots".

~~~
jasonkostempski
I was just thinking this morning how all the stuff we get from china should be
the first things we try to automate so we can't stop contributing to child
labor.

~~~
bigbugbag
China has been replacing human worker with robots for a while now. The reason
stuff is made in China is not child labor but supply chain availability.

------
smarx007
Inventor: [https://angel.co/nikita-cheniuntai](https://angel.co/nikita-
cheniuntai)

------
willyt
Other people have mentioned the high embodied energy of concrete but there is
also a problem with insulating this structure. I hope the PIR wasn't just
injected into the cavity because that is a recipe for disaster. The zigzag
cross bracing you can see will be a massive cold bridge which will cause cold
spots that will develop mould patches inside. Concrete is not breathable (it
is mostly impermeable to water vapour) but hairline cracks develop which make
it capillary active and will allow water to be wicked into the interstitial
space containing the insulation and then through to the inner face to cause
damp problems. A standard concrete wall needs to be a minimum of 300mm of
solid concrete to remove the chance that a localised crack will form right
through the wall. Usually when concrete is used it is purely for the floors
and structural frame for this reason. You do see concrete clad structures but
these are typically decorative panels with a capillary break behind, or they
are damp and leaky old 60's buildings. Paint systems are not the solution as
they tend to fail within 3 - 10 years and then they just trap even more
moisture in the construction. Conventional houses get around this problem with
a capillary break, basically just an air gap between the outer wall and the
internal insulation which is on a block or in between timber structure. The
alternative, which is well understood in central Europe, is to use breathable
materials such as calcium silicate blocks and wood fibre insulation.

It looks like it forms a structure that only works in compression because of
the way it is laid down. Even if it is glass reinforced concrete I don't think
there could be a good structural interface between the printed layers. This is
why it doesn't print the roof and they don't show how they dealt with the
lintels over the doors and windows. These must have been installed manually.
If the window openings had been 3d printed then they would have needed gothic
arches to get around the 45 degree angle corbeling problem which is inherent
in compression structures and the roof would have looked like a gothic vault
for the same reason.

Another thing that is needed to make this into a dwelling that won't go
mouldy, is some kind of vapour control layer on the inner concrete face. You
then need to wire the place up, but there is the problem of how to hide the
wires internally. You don't want electrical cables to go through the vapour
control layer where possible and you definitely don't want any cable junctions
where there is a risk of interstitial condensation making the electrics 'go
fizzy'. Did they have to manually install dry lining over the cables? Are the
internal faces rendered over conduit and then plastered?

I think their costs are suspicious as well, I don't know about Russia but in
europe $227 would barely cover one day of time for 1 groundworks operative let
alone machine hire and materials for foundations. A recent project we worked
on had £20,000 installed cost just for the gravel fill for the groundworks for
2 small houses.

As an Architect, I think CNC machined cross laminated timber panels are more
interesting because the embodied energy characteristics are much better and
they are capable of forming diaphragm structures that experience tension such
as floor and roof planes. In general flat vertical surfaces are not going away
any time soon, because they are ABI compatible with Furniture v1.0.

------
spraak
I wonder about 3d printing with cob like materials.

~~~
ctack
I image using a similar jig, but with wider tubing and possibly mixing the
straw in as clay mixture is being poured out. But how would keep the cob
mixture consistent? Pre separated components, like the sand, clay, straw?
Depending on how wet you apply it, you might need to take timeouts for layers
to dry.

~~~
spraak
Yeah, lots of questions to get it right.

------
pmiller2
I'd be interested to see how the process scales up to larger structures. That
house is smaller than my apartment!

------
pascalxus
Finally some real innovation! This is awesome.

Now, let's get this over here in CA - I know I'm just dreaming.

------
nikolay
You don't have to print a house - it better be built from Lego-like blocks.

------
hossbeast
We need Elon Musk to ship a few of these things to Mars

------
vadym909
Great to build a large and long wall /s

------
jlebrech
we should print on the moon using robots with no human aid.

this is what elon musk must send, not just an orbital tour.

------
jlebrech
the housing crisis needs vertical buildings, I hope 3d printing can got in
that direction soon.

------
m3kw9
A house without plumbing

------
djrobstep
What's the point of cheap housing if the landowning rentier class keeps
extorting everybody through higher and higher rents?

The only way to get actually affordable housing is to tax land so hard that it
stops being an investment at all and becomes merely a commodity, like it
should be.

~~~
darawk
Nobody is extorting anyone. Rents are set by the market price just like
anything else. Landowners can only charge what people are willing to pay.

If there is a problem, it's with the availability of land for building new
housing. Zoning laws and NIMBYism artificially constrain the supply side of
the equation, which drives up rents. There is no extortion happening - just
supply constriction.

~~~
bigbugbag
I'm not sure where you live, but right now on HN's front page there's a post
about the housing bubble in Toronto and the 100k vacant homes in Paris. So
what you say may be true where you live but it is not the case elsewhere.

Many people pay more than they were willing to or have to share their place to
be able to pay rent. When the choice is between paying more than you were
willing to or not having a place to live, you don't really have a choice.

~~~
Y_Y
I agree with your sentiment but not your language. Nobody pays "more than
they're willing to" in economic terms. They have the choice to not pay rent
and be homeless, and the price they pay in rent reflects their desire not to
do that. But I'll agree that most people pay more than they'd like, more than
is sensible and more than is fair.

~~~
caryhartline
People can also "choose" no to pay for food and eventually die of hunger. To
describe paying for basics like its a choice is highly insulting to those who
cannot afford those basics.

~~~
conanbatt
With the same morality it would be highly insulting to those who cant get food
to worry about taxing properties in the city so middle-class have better
access to them.

But even more, it would be more practical to understand why are people paying
such high rents, not only because of housing supply, but because of the
concentration of work in the cities, once again, making it way more
sustainable to live in a city than in the country side.

------
m0llusk
This isn't useful because the printed house lacks wiring, plumbing, and
finishes and is also an example of wasteful land use. The occupant of this
house will indirectly demand roads, power, water, and sewer systems and most
likely parking for a car as well. If we accept that housing has become
critical issue then we need to take it seriously and look at the whole problem
and what aspects are the most costly. Currently planning, infrastructure
impacts, and labor intensive details are where most of the money goes. Basic
construction is already competitively cheap.

~~~
Spooky23
Housing isn't a critical issue at all. Housing is large cities is a critical
problem.

With the internet and modern transport infrastructure there's no reason to
live in a big US metro area like SFO or NYC. The quality of life sucks and the
cost of living is outrageous. I can be in midtown Manhattan with a trip about
20 minutes longer than the average Long Island commuter, and live in a bigger,
nicer home in a better place that would be possible in the metropolitan area.

It's kind of ironic that we pay people on the other side of the planet to run
our IT systems, but the average technology company insists on locating much of
its stateside operations in a small number of ridiculously expensive places
that increase cost and almost certainly decrease the quality of output. Car
companies figured this out 100 years ago.

~~~
adevine
> almost certainly decrease the quality of output

I think this is a dubious statement. The bifurcation of American society, with
increasing concentration of wealth in cities, and increasingly desolate rural
areas, has only accelerated in recent years.

The fact is that most in demand knowledge workers _want_ to live in central
urban areas. You say you can have commute "only 20 mins longer than your
average Long Island commuter" \- does that mean your door-to-door time is over
an hour each way? No thank you, I'd much rather live in a small apartment with
a 15 minute walkable commute.

~~~
cookiecaper
>The fact is that most in demand knowledge workers want to live in central
urban areas.

That's definitely false. There are hot markets for "knowledge workers" in
every American metro, and a hot virtual market that is more than happy to pay
for talented developers no matter where they're located.

In local markets, salaries may be adjusted based on the cost of living, but in
relative terms, valuable knowledge workers have a lot of opportunity and are
compensated well for their work wherever they live.

You might be conflating "my classmates at the university" with "in-demand
knowledge workers", but it's incorrect to assume that people who could match
the profile of a recent graduate comprise the majority, or really even a
substantial part, of the "desirable worker" market. Real-world experience is
immensely valuable, and real-world experience is generally only found where
age, the necessary corollary of experience, exists. That is frequently _not_
urban centers.

I know a senior developer who, in his mid-50s, left behind the Seattle metro
for a quiet life in the mountains of Idaho. As long as he had an internet
connection, his clients were more than happy to keep him on board.

I've spent my entire career in metro areas of respectable size, but not the
"urban centers" or tech hotspots that you're probably referring to. There are
good (and bad) developers everywhere.

>No thank you, I'd much rather live in a small apartment with a 15 minute
walkable commute.

That works while you have 1 -- _maybe_ 2 -- inhabitants in your "small" (read:
_tiny_ ) apartment. If you ever have kids, the impracticality of this plan
will be immediately visible. This further suggests that you're constraining
your view of "in demand knowledge workers" to the under-30 set. I suggest you
get out more!

------
fiatjaf
What's the point of cheap housing if people are going to spend all the money
that is saved into unneeded new electronic devices or new cars?

