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World's Largest 3D-Printed Neighborhood Nears Completion in Texas (reuters.com) 91

Posted by msmash from the new-ways dept.
ICON, a construction technology company, is nearing completion of 100 3D-printed homes in Wolf Ranch, Texas, using a massive robotic printer. The 45-foot-wide, 4.75-ton Vulcan printer began constructing the walls of what ICON claims is the world's largest 3D-printed community in November 2022. The printer extrudes a concrete mixture layer by layer, creating corduroy-textured walls. ICON senior project manager Conner Jenkins told Reuters the process is faster and more efficient than traditional construction, requiring fewer workers and reducing material waste.

The single-story homes, priced between $450,000 and $600,000, feature concrete walls resistant to water, mold, termites, and extreme weather. However, homeowners reported weak wireless signals due to the thick walls, necessitating mesh internet routers. ICON, which printed its first home in Austin in 2018, is also developing lunar construction systems for NASA's Artemis program.
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World's Largest 3D-Printed Neighborhood Nears Completion in Texas More

World's Largest 3D-Printed Neighborhood Nears Completion in Texas

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  • Corduroy seems unnecessary (Score:3)

    by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Thursday August 08, 2024 @02:09PM (#64690832)

    Why not use slipform concrete methods? In this case, a partial form around the extruder that could keep the sides flatter. Obviously it would have to be retractable and useless on inside corners, but for the majority of a wall it could be quite useful.

    I also have to wonder if that wouldn't reduce the amount of concrete required - those corduroy bulges are just non-structural mass that lower layers need to support.

    • Why not use slipform concrete methods? In this case, a partial form around the extruder that could keep the sides flatter. Obviously it would have to be retractable and useless on inside corners, but for the majority of a wall it could be quite useful.

      Just guessing, but I think that maybe if the concrete ever stuck to the partial form you're suggesting, there would be a heck of a mess to clean up. At the very least, the form dragging some of the previous layer's concrete up as it goes might cause unwanted voids when the next layer is deposited. A Teflon coating might minimize that, but would probably increase inspection and maintenance requirements.

      Also, looking at the video I got the impression that the walls are hollow. If I'm right, then the moving fo

    • At 3-weeks, it's close to the same amount of time to build a home in a more traditional way. I'm guessing the reason wasn't time. Probably they hope to increase the level of automation and decrease the build-time as they get more experience.
      • I think using prefab/lego based large concrete bricks could even speed up the home building itself by a large margin, and certainly with dedicated robots.
        • Me, too. I have a fantasy of a bunch of smaller builder-bots that climb all over the worksite like ants carrying a small block to put in place. One sits there turning dirt into building blocks with compressed-earth-blocks or they crap out aerocrete blocks in various shapes and sizes while others carry them off and place them. They'd "lick" the blocks with mortar and set them where they were needed. Other bots would run wiring and place the plumbing. The roof would just be the same CEB machine compressing an

        • Skipping article after the first paragraph as it does not include the cost per square foot and comparison to conventionally built house cost per square foot.

          It's just a PR pretending to be a news article....

    • How would the slipform be added to the walls ?? By people, that's the point of all the 3D printing. Remove the cost of labor and finish the construction in days, not months.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Concrete really isn't the ideal material to be building houses from, and neither is brick. There are much lower CO2 materials that do a good job of insulating homes for heat and sound.

      • While it's still early days commercially, cement tech continues to advance. There are mixes that reduce the carbon footprint of Portland cement production by 10%, and others that claim as much as a 90% reduction without sacrifice of mechanical properties.

        But what's really fun is it has recently been determined how the Romans made self-healing concrete, so now we can do that too.

  • Thick walls are good (Score:4, Insightful)

    by gurps_npc ( 621217 ) on Thursday August 08, 2024 @02:11PM (#64690834) Homepage

    If their only problem is walls thick enough to block wifi, necessitating repeaters, that is a total win.

    Different methods of building houses have different issues. This one appears to have solved many of the older issues.

    The real question is, are they right about the cost? I am sure the speed and lower required workers is accurate (hard to miscalculate those), but often cost changes drastically from a one off project to a larger industry.

    Honestly, we already know how to build better houses - if you want a wind proof house,you can easily get it for 5-10% more money and be tornado proof. Same for flooding - pay about 10% more and you can build a flood proof house. We don't do it because tornado and floods are rare enough that it is cheaper to spend that money on insurance in most locations (though Florida has changed that recently).

    Should this scale up nicely, without raising the price, it could become standard.
     

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • I don't know much about real estate, but anything to help mass produce housing seems like a positive thing for the world.

        In a corporatist world in which you have to have a job to have a roof over your head, printing homes will only lead to additional unemployment and therefore fewer people able to afford to move into them.

        The tech is not to blame, but employing it will still cause harm.

        • In a corporatist world in which you have to have a job to have a roof over your head

          Err...houses and apartments cost money to build and run.

          How do you propose people live in them if they don't work and have a source of income?

          I mean, I guess they could do like times of old and go out in the woods and build a cabin with their hands or live in a cave, but shy of that...what do you propose?

          • When automation is doing all the work, where exactly are people supposed to find a job to get income?

            • Steal it from labour, like other successful (ruch) people.

            • When automation is doing all the work, where exactly are people supposed to find a job to get income?

              I don't seriously see this as a realistic future for many generations to come, so, not really a concern.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Zak3056 ( 69287 )

              I realize I'm off topic here, but I can't help but believe your sig is probably a response to mine, so...

              What part of "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State" is so hard to understand?

              It's not hard to understand at all--so why are you construing it to mean something that it doesn't? A "well regulated militia" is one that is well trained and well equipped. They're "necessary to the security of a free state" because the people who wrote that believed more in the citizenry defending their homes as opposed to a standing army which could get up to mischief in times of peace (whether that

        • Not sure what country you are living in, but I'm from Texas. I can tell you that lack of housing is a huge problem in just about every area with any growth.

          It takes this company in TFA three weeks to build one of these. That's pretty much on par with a construction crew. Presumably they could save money on the crew but I imagine the "printers" aren't just run from a pushbutton and they have a crew to run the concrete-pouring printer. Most of these systems use some form of Aerocrete so they can manage the

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Teun ( 17872 )
            As a European I was at first shocked by the price of 450-600K but then I saw in the video's how large these houses are.
            In other words, it should be possible to build a liveable 3-bedroom house for like half that price.

        • Re:Thick walls are good (Score:4)

          by SomePoorSchmuck ( 183775 ) on Thursday August 08, 2024 @03:57PM (#64691106) Homepage

          I don't know much about real estate, but anything to help mass produce housing seems like a positive thing for the world.

          In a [-----------] world in which you have to have a job to have a roof over your head.

          FIFY.
          We have always lived in that world, for every single year going back hundreds of thousands of years before nation-state chartered corporations existed. The only thing that changes every few years now is which job you have to have. Until quite recently in human history, the job you had to have to have a roof over your head was... the job of manually constructing the roof over your head.

          I agree with you about the dangers of structural unemployment. It's an obvious, inevitable, and rapidly accelerating reality I have been warning about for 20 years, but before ~2017 people kept hand-waving it away with "something something learn to code" and "blahblah buggy whips". But the need to construct shelter from the elements, and the necessary labor/value exchange to provide the labor, has absolutely nothing to do with a "corporatist world".
          Birds do it, bees do it, even tiny HPVs do it. So let's do it. Let's build a home.

        • Unemployment due to automation by AI and robots is a certainty. Society should move fast to a way where you don't need to work for money for housing, food, clothing, medicare and education.

        • In a corporatist world ... will only lead to additional unemployment and therefore fewer people able to afford to move into them.

          Bogus claim not supported with facts or evidence - so far any technological progress, which made stuff cheaper instead led to more people being able to afford it, rapid development and never foreseen totally new branches of industry employing even more people, who got better and more comfortable existence in return.

      • I like the idea of prefabricated homes as well,

        UGH...not me.

        I cannot stand the modern neighborhoods...where every fucking house looks exactly the same...cookie cutter.

        I don't like HOA's either...refuse to live in one of those.

        I don't think there's anything wrong with occasionally seeing the purple house in the neighborhood...then again, I live in New Orleans.

        • Re:Thick walls are good (Score:4, Informative)

          by Anubis IV ( 1279820 ) on Thursday August 08, 2024 @03:14PM (#64691018)

          Prefabricated != cookie cutter. While there may be a correlation between the two, they aren't synonymous. Watch a show like Grand Designs and you'll find numerous examples of prefabricated homes that are one-off floorplans based on original architectural blueprints.

          Prefabricated just means that the pieces to build the house were fabricated in advance, such as in a factory, at which point they're shipped to the final destination, but there's nothing saying you need to repeat that same design over and over again. Many people prefabricate their homes because it's cheaper and/or easier to do that work off-site than trying to do it all on-site where you're affected by weather and other factors.

          That said, I wouldn't call this work here an example of prefabrication. Automation? Sure. Mass production? Sure. Prefabrication? No, because they built it from scratch on-site.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Sique ( 173459 )
      The main problem is that right now, 3D printed houses are feasible only in newly developed lots. If you have to built in tight spaces like in any European town center, you don't have any way to place the printing contraption. And if you are building on newly developed lots, you can prefabricate basically everything and just mount it on site.

      So I doubt that right now, 3D printed houses are anything more than just novelty. I doubt that you really save on construction costs. The material is more expensive th

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Teun ( 17872 )
        I don't see any problem using this tech to build between neighbouring buildings.
        The present printer is supported outside the house, there's no reason to not have it supported inside the house or outside only on the front and back.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Sique ( 173459 )
          • All 3D printers are enclosures for the item they are printing. They are always larger than the object they manufacture. While in theory, you could come up with a way to print with a contraption from the inside of the print, it's geometrically unstable and leads to printing inaccuracies or really complicated constructions to stabilize the geometry. This makes the 3D printer an one-off-construction only for this one print or horribly expensive if built with some modularity to adapt to different prints - with

    • A big problem in central and eastern Austin, and northern areas like Georgetown is that the ground has a big thick layer of clay. Our old house in NE Austin was on 16ft of clay, and I've heard stories of areas that are 60ft+ thick. All that clay expands and contracts with water and heat cycles. So lots and lots of houses in those areas have foundation problems and need repairs at some point. I'd say within probably less than 20yrs of age.

      Traditional wood framing and sheetrock walls can hide foundation

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by lxrslh ( 652069 )

      Honestly, we already know how to build better houses - if you want a wind proof house,you can easily get it for 5-10% more money and be tornado proof. Same for flooding - pay about 10% more and you can build a flood proof house.

      Just curious how one can build a "tornado proof" house for 5-10% more money. Based on pictures, it seems only a poured reinforced concrete structure could be that strong.

  • The 3D-printed homes at Wolf Ranch, called the "Genesis Collection" by developers, range in price from around $450,000 to close to $600,000.

    A quick Zillow search shows 260 homes in that price range also for sale in Georgetown TX, so what advantage does this net the purchaser? It's cheaper and faster for the builder as stated in the article. I've become a fan of "Home Inspector Youtube" channels, would be very interested to see what they have to say about these.

    • Maybe they can be made larger for the same price?

      Certainly seems like they are going to be sturdier than a wood framed house.

      • That's a good point, I would have to comapre SQ/ft pricing but even then, wood framed houses can be perfectly sturdy... if they are built right. Plenty of century+ wood houses in America.

        I suppose this would be cheaper than actual brick and higher "class" than block construction so that is a good point.

        • Whatever they do, if the builder saves money vis-a-vis the local housing market price, they are going to pocket it. They damn sure won't offer the homes at a cut rate to undercut the other houses. For one, the locals would be pissed and probably never give them another building permit. Then second, they'd never take a hit on their profits (heaven forfend).

          • This is a good explanation of the housing-death-loop many areas of the USA find themselves in.

            • Yep. Either mass-building or mass-depopulation would be required to smash the housing market. Mass building is off the table because, essentially, almost all the good spots are taken. The ones that aren't taken are sky-high because people know they have prime real estate.

              Even if they do make building houses super-cheap, there are some missing pieces to make them accessible and free them from having to be close to power, water, and sewer. Namely that adding a septic tank, solar + bms + batteries, and a we

              • For cities the answer is density. Cities become more popular and there's only so much space, build more dense housing. This is pretty much the tip of all California's issues imo. Homelessness, CoL, crime, transit, traffic. You can trace them all back to "not enough homes", NIMBY folks not allowing more density to maintain their inflated property values, those same homeowners voted themselves artificially low property taxes so they have no impetus to cash out and move on, it's just awful all around.

                And t

                • NIMBY folks not allowing more density

                  Though we are pretty far apart politically, I agree with the majority of your post, but especially this. I'm not a conservative, I'm a small-L libertarian (mostly but also pretty independent, I break with many traditional libertarian ideas, too).

                  The issue of zoning reform is huge. You shouldn't be able to restrict your neighbor from the peaceful enjoyment of their property and that includes building upwards. If it blots out the sun or your view of the mountains/ocean/tanning-salon, that's too bad. People

                  • Your post absolutely made me think of this [imgflip.com] becuase it's maddening to see the discourse, especially watching some city council meetings over it. I even notice it around me more and more, right in my neighborhood there was a plan to take a big blighted lot with an old building that a church is rented and turn it into a full shopping/apartments city center type area, like 600 nice units. I thought it was awesome but there was a goddamned line out the door to have it shot down. It's in limbo still to this da

                  • Start taxing the churches...they're taking up prime real estate all over cities. Or....maybe the churches should be entirely responsible for housing the homeless?
                    The ratio of homeless to churches in the U.S. is about 2:1....so, surely each church could find space for a couple of cots? (This is half-sarcasm....I realize it's more complicated than that)

                    But, if we're being honest...the people complaining about lack of housing, are actually complaining about lack of cheap-luxury-housing-in-places-they-want-to-

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by spitzak ( 4019 )

                      There are numerous examples where NIMBYs have sued and attacked churches that have attempted to house poor/homeless people on their own property.

                    • Are "poor" and "homeless" the only qualifiers there? Or is there maybe another qualifier being left out, that really set people off?
                      If these "examples" happen to be cases where homeless are being shipped to the suburbs...you'd be a NIMBY too.

                      I don't think there's a lot of single family homes, on their own plot of land...in the "downtowns" of major cities. But there are a lot of churches...

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by spitzak ( 4019 )

                      The people they attempted to house are homeless, or at least poor enough they can't pay for housing. Not sure what you are getting at, it is pretty obvious that "poor" is 100% of the reason the NIMBYs don't like it.

                      I think a church is not allowed to use it's land for a paid apartment building and collect rent, as they would lose their tax-exempt status. So it is going to be housing given away for free and they want to give it to people who need it.

                    • No...it's not necessarily 100% of the reason. There could could easily be another qualifier that you haven't mentioned.

                      Personally, I think the churches should be required to house a certain number of individuals in need....to MAINTAIN their exempt status.
                      It'd just be "requiring" them to practice what they preach anyways...

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by spitzak ( 4019 )

                      Not sure exactly what you are getting at. My feelings from seeing the claims is that the objections are that the people are poor and that there would be several of them and they could walk outside the facility. I guess there could be racism as well but my impression is that the neighbors equally hate all poor people no matter what their color.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by HiThere ( 15173 )

        Don't bet on sturdier. More fire resistant, yes, and several other advantages. Also, though, heavier. But many concrete panels have a lifetime measured in only a few decades. This is new material, so who knows.

  • Went to their site to check out "the cordouroy" but the first thing you notice is how super crammed together the houses are and the tiny tiny back yards. They might as well be town-houses. The driveways look so close together that you can't even park a car between two of them on the street in most places. bleh.

    https://homes.iconbuild.com/wo... [iconbuild.com]

    • You clearly never been to California. CA homes are inches apart left/right.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      the first thing you notice is how super crammed together

      Nothing to do with the 3D printing process. And there's not much you can do about it either*.

      *Except for being Bill Gates, who can afford to buy up multiple waterfront homes, bulldoze them and build one in their place with a bit of elbow room**.

      **But good luck doing even that. Local cities are pushing the "urbanist" agenda. Which says we must all live on postage stamp lots, elbow to elbow with each other. So nice try with getting a building permit for anything else.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jbengt ( 874751 )

        **But good luck doing even that. Local cities are pushing the "urbanist" agenda. Which says we must all live on postage stamp lots, elbow to elbow with each other. So nice try with getting a building permit for anything else.

        No, it's the developers that push dense development. The "local cities" are more likely to be pressured by the locals to stop that, while pressured to allow it by the threats of lawsuits from developers who claim preferential treatment of the last project that was allowed denser devel

  • is basically the same as any other house, how is this style of construction superior to other styles of construction? Do the thicker walls provide better overall insulation, making the home more energy efficient? Can you do different designs that aren't practical in other methods?

    If all this does is increase profits, who cares? Honestly, the cost of building a house has nothing to do with it's costs anyway. The house will sell for what the market will allow and right now, the market says 80% of households a

    • Another question about practicality is repairability. Concrete is in general pretty difficult to repair when it has to be structural. Seismic activity is increasing in Texas [usatoday.com] and if you think fracking and deep wells are a big problem, wait until sea level rise really amps up and the weight of that water on the land combines with that activity.

    • Concrete makes a quiet, fire-retardant, pest-resistant building. If you use the correct concrete, it is also very water-resistant.

      If you put insulation on the exterior, all that concrete is thermal mass that will dampen internal temperature swings.

    • "feature concrete walls resistant to water, mold, termites, and extreme weather."

      You could get most of that with concrete blocks. Being able to put in curved walls might be nice though. How they reinforce the structure for earthquakes is a good question.

  • They are not 3D Printed "Homes" (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Bolkar ( 939958 ) on Thursday August 08, 2024 @02:51PM (#64690960)
    The only thing 3D printed in these are the walls and part of the structure. There are hundreds of more materials and systems that goes into a house. And guess what, the cost of walls are minuscule compared to the total cost of a house (hence the price of the houses). This technology is a gimmick at best in its current form. Also as an Architect, those lines (from each print layer) on the walls are horrible. I cant imagine how much dirt/dust will be there (it is very difficult to clean as well). You have to finish the walls for a smooth surface to make it livable, which adds additional cost.

    • Question for you -

      Usual house walls carry the utilities - wires, ducts, plumbing. Do these concrete printed walls have such internal spaces to lay the wires? Or, do the utility conduits need to be hung on the outside of the walls, and if so, then covered in paneling or other facade?

      Do those concrete ripples just stay as is, just painted perhaps, or do they too get some sort of facade covering?

      Seems like these issues would add extra cost just to hide what framed walls do "automatically".

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Bolkar ( 939958 )
        Well, from the looks of it, the walls have an interior cavity, where technically you can run pipes, conduits for plumbing/electrical/network, etc. However, it needs to be done during the "printing" process, otherwise you will not be able to reach within at those wall heights unless you start cutting holes in the wall. I do not see a practical way to do this, while the machine is running. If you cannot do it during the wall printing, you have to run everything on the face of the wall (which is not visually a

    • And guess what, the cost of walls are minuscule compared to the total cost of a house (hence the price of the houses).

      They really aren't. Sure the fit-out of a hose does cost a lot, but "minuscule" is hardly the word to describe what is actually between 1/4 and 1/2 of the total cost depending on the complexity of the structure and the style of the furnishing.

      Also as an Architect, those lines (from each print layer) on the walls are horrible. I cant imagine how much dirt/dust will be there (it is very difficult to clean as well).

      There's plenty of people who will think it looks unique and interesting, and if not it would be trivial to render the final result. But ultimately the cleaning thing is quite irrelevant. Many outside finishes of houses have horizontal dirt traps, including highly trend

  • The main reason I want to see 3-D homebuilding succeed is to bring down the cost of home-ownership by making it cheaper to build homes. This doesn't solve the problem of NOBODY CAN AFFORD A $600,000 HOME. They're only using the new method to increase profits. So short-sighted.

  • Why someone hasn't yet made a system of pieces that could be snapped/glued together to construct a home is beyond me. Sure you still need to pour a foundation but then it's just stacking prefabbed pieces that lock together and secured with an adhesive to make it air tight, even windows and doors can be a snap in piece. You will be limited to the manufacturer's chosen piece size (which could be standardized like all building codes) but it seems feasible to me.

    Once you hit economy of scale, the speed you c
    • There's polystyrene ICF blocks that go together about like legos. A lot of the web sites say "If you can build with Legos, you can build with (our product)."

    • Not exactly glued but that's how the soviets built a shitload of apartment buildings, by mass-manufacturing large panels and just assembling them in place

      https://www.zupagrafika.com/po... [zupagrafika.com]

      They had some... issues but I think we could do better now, and making some actually affordable housing should be a top priority.

  • Sorry, but those walls look unfinished to me. I can understand why they want to print this, but who wants walls like that on the inside, I want straight flat walls. I think prefab (or lego based large bricks) would even be much faster to construct and also can be done completely by a dedicated robot.
  • They really needs to get a printer that can print with cellular concrete (aircrete) rather than cement paste. The aircrete is much easier to work with for subsequent building trades, and they can print gaps where a grid of rebar (steel or basalt) and actual concrete with aggregate can be poured which will make much better walls for seismic issues that the stacked layers of grout the printer puts out now. Of course, I've been a fan of grid system cementitious ICFs and AAC for a long time, so I would think t

  • I'm not seeing how this has resulted in dramatic cost savings. (except maybe for the builder)

    Yeah, yeah...prices vary in different markets. But $450k seems to get you a comparable, new construction, traditional house in Texas.

    It's neat...but is it really better? or just "different"?

  • All the int walls are concrete? That'll be real fun to do any renos on...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ChoGGi ( 522069 )

      You want to hang a picture/tv, you bust out the masonry bits?
      How do you repair holes when you want to sell the place?
      Wife wants to move the ext lights, again what do you do to clean up the old holes?
      I am curious how they install the windows, box it with 2x4s and nail into that?

      How do you keep those walls clean...

      • > You want to hang a picture/tv, you bust out the masonry bits?

        No. You cover the wall with furring strips and hang a layer of drywall over that.

        I've seen several people raise this objection.

        What do you think people do with existing dwellings made of brick, poured concrete or concrete blocks?

        We've been building them for centuries and there are zillions of them.

        All these problems were solved long ago. I can assure you that there are people living in brick buildings who have television sets.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ChoGGi ( 522069 )

          Yes, I've hung tvs in brick walls. I still don't see why I'd pay the same price for this as a wood framed house.

  • Are easily parted, apparently even for concrete homes.

  • ... meaning they finished it in a day and the next gust is going blow everything away or the next fire is going to burn everything to the ground.
    And the houses cost as much as a European concrete bungalow that can withstand a nuclear strike. :-)

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

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