New Building in Your Future?

[digitS']

Does this seem reasonable ?

Icon Construction - INC Magazine

I think of a concrete building as cooold. Even with some type of insulation ... Maybe, I'm really mistaken. I've built a couple of basements and foundations for my own buildings. Worked with a crew that built basements for a time and worked for a concrete block company. I've never lived in a concrete house and there are few around here.

However, I can't help but think that this will be the way things will go in the future.

Steve

 

[Dirtmechanic]

I like the idea. As finished as that machine is compared to older versions of the idea, I think it designed more for sale than use. I like a concrete base. Here in the Southeast the tornadoes make me like a concrete wall. It seems likely that a machine using wood fiber should be in the future. Recycled paper and plastic treated with boric acid.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Steve, think of it as well insulated, at least a regular concrete house. We looked at a concrete house when we first moved to Arkansas. The guy selling it owned the company that built concrete houses. Once they are warm they stay warm. If cool they stay cool. They are supposedly very energy efficient. It was our favorite house and my favorite lot, about three acres with a lot of possibilities. But the location was not good and the guy built it 7' from his father's house when he had three acres to build on. That's not why you move to the country, to be 7' from someone else. Insurance companies really like them.

With the bead 2" wide those walls are probably about 9" thick? That should be strong enough though I'd probably want to stick with a one story house. At my age I'd want a one story house anyway. I'm not sure how attractive the finish would be. The one in Arkansas was very attractive, they can do interesting things with dyes in the concrete and it had a smooth finish. The floors were especially nice.

Is 3D printing a concrete house without using a form practical? I think I'd want them to work on the technology a bit. I think they highlighted the biggest technological issue. Getting it to stick together in a continuous "pour" without it sagging. I'd think anything that interfered with that process to cause a delay would not be good. And how do you do the ceilings and roof? Are the utilities, plumbing and electrical, exposed? Those are probably just details.

 

[digitS']

I looked at a couple of articles. One was about a 3D house in France. The machine looked very crude by comparison to ICON's, @Dirtmechanic .

The ceiling and roof look conventional, @Ridgerunner . Utilities could be in the ceiling.

Another article had something about the construction experience. Their onsite electricity was provided by a generator and the boss was over siphoning fuel out of a truck while critical minutes were passing when the 3D machine shut down.

Steve

 

[Prairie Rose]

My grandmother had an older concrete house, and aside from the problems that arose when it came to making renovation-style changes, she loved it. Once it got warm in the winter it stayed warm, and once it was cool in the summer it stayed cool. No basement, but it was the congregating place for all the neighbors with their wood frame houses during storms. It was also very quiet; she lived on a busy road and unless there was a window open, there was never any traffic noise. You only knew it was concrete because the interior walls were painted concrete, the builders had overlayed the exterior with bricks.

The only problem they ever truly had with it was as my grandmother got older and we needed to make changes to keep her at home as long as she wanted, we kept hitting limitations. Very cost prohibitive to widen doorways for a walker or wheelchair when the walls are concrete, and when it got to be too dangerous for her to step into a tub it took a custom job to get her a shower/tub combo with a door. The new building standard was too big to fit into her older (smaller) doorframes.

I have seen videos of those concrete house-builders before, and I wonder if the speed that they build is worth the lack of customization options.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I have seen videos of those concrete house-builders before, and I wonder if the speed that they build is worth the lack of customization options.

Since this one is laser printed you'd think they could program in many things like cut-outs or holes in walls, but once concrete is set, it's set.

I don't know what the cost difference is between the laser-printed, regular form poured concrete, or traditional stick house. I'm not sure how much time you actually save either between the laser printed and a stick house. The concrete has to set up and a lot of the time is in the finishing anyway. You'd have to look at the time and cost from signing the contract until move-in.

 

[flowerbug]

Does this seem reasonable ?

Icon Construction - INC Magazine

I think of a concrete building as cooold. Even with some type of insulation ... Maybe, I'm really mistaken. I've built a couple of basements and foundations for my own buildings. Worked with a crew that built basements for a time and worked for a concrete block company. I've never lived in a concrete house and there are few around here.

However, I can't help but think that this will be the way things will go in the future.

Steve

not to me. especially in earthquake/tornado country. that little ribbon of concrete has very little sheer strength and that zigzag interior of that wall isn't going to help much either.

 

[Rhodie Ranch]

My DD is a software designer for a humongeous 3D printing company. They are working with medical companies to 3D print human internal parts. Concrete seems like an easy project....

 

[Rhodie Ranch]

I can envision additives to the concrete to increase its sheer strength while providing some flexibility in movement.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I can envision additives to the concrete to increase its sheer strength while providing some flexibility in movement.

That's called rebar but it would not work here. Concrete is tremendously good in compression and horrible in tension. I doubt you could print steel rebar but you could come up with some type of fiberglas that would work. But the fiberglas would need to be embedded in the concrete in a continuous section. If it's not continuous the concrete in between would break in tension. This might require a different material coming out of a special nozzle. That would greatly complicate the application.

The other issue is cover. The concrete has to be thick enough to bond to the rebar. That's why concrete slabs are typically 4" thick minimum. You need about 2" each side to get the concrete and rebar to act as a composite material. This is regular concrete and rebar. With a special concrete and a special fiberglas you could get by with less but the principle should be the same. They may be doing something like this with that special concrete, I don't know.

Typical concrete walls with rebar work well in tornadoes. In earthquake regions they have special codes requiring certain designs with concrete, those use a lot of rebar. I don't know enough about the mechanical properties of this laser-printed material to know how it would fare in tornadoes or earthquakes. You can do things with foundations so that the entire building moves as a unit instead of getting shaken apart when an earthquake moves through but hose can be expensive.

As a former structural engineer I can see some of the issues but there are usually solutions.