Posted on 05/01/2021 10:53:44 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Insulation?
I have made plans, which I will never be able to afford, of a poured concrete home with walls poured on both sides of a 4 inch foam. Fireproof on both sides. Using waterproof concrete of course. Conduit for electrical lines and water lines preinstalled in the walls and floor.
What catches my eye in this story is the setting of the show house. Like many modernistic, non-traditional designs, the house shown strikes me as unattractive. What makes it acceptable in the story is the setting. It's a demo house set in isolation on an expansive lot, surrounded by a big grassy yard and framed/screened by trees. Plant ivy to cover the walls or surround it with trees and large shrubs to soften the concrete and it might blend nicely. A lot of modernist architecture is overdependent on concrete, glass or steel, which can be sterile and boring. Many modernist homes, however, are designed to open the interior to the outside (this one isn't), and compatible landscaping is essential to achieving the effect.
Expansive landscaping and large lawns, however, are not often involved in how affordable housing is usually built and sited. The question that should be asked is how this house would look with 20 of them on a city block, with another 20 facing them across the street on one side and across the alley on the other, with the pattern repeated block after block after block in all directions, with a few bedraggled shrubs thrown in on microscopic front yards or tree plats.
At the densities needed for large scale deployment, my (only partly tongue in cheek) thought would be to mound dirt over them. They would make perfectly acceptable hobbit holes if the waterproofing in the roof seams is good enough. Plant grass and small shrubs on the slopes of the mounds, and you would have Hobbiton. I've never lived in an underground house, but the concept has a certain appeal. I wouldn't want a bunker; I'd want a front door and front picture windows opening onto a nicely landscaped front yard or garden, which could be small in size and perhaps walled. If I were building a house, I probably wouldn't go that far, but I might play with a green roof with a rooftop garden. This sort of thing is always dependent on the neighborhood. In normal urban and suburban settings, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts; one always wants to blend nicely with the neighbors and do something that enhances the houses next door.
These inventions are pointless. Walls are easy, and are the cheapest part of building a home. Kitchens and bathrooms are what’s expensive.
Kitchens and bathrooms get expensive by the fixtures & appliances installed. So the luxury ones wouldn't be an option that could be used anyway due to size constraints. At least I would think not at any rate.
What’s so new about this? I saw 3d Concrete printed houses at a US trade show about 4 years ago.
Might work well as some sort of hybrid. Print the foundation walls then stick build the rest of the house.
How is this better than tilt wall construction techniques other than faster curing cement?
Ping.
A friend of mine lives in one of those. The tornado rating is remarkable when you consider what the load numbers must be on a big flat surface.
I wish I had known of the technique when we built our house (if it was even available then.)
Bkmk
Home took 120 hours (5 days) to print. OK.
And how many hours to (1) load on a hauler, (2) transport to the site, (3) erect and join the pieces on the site, (4) add exterior windows doors, roof and complete the outside, (5) finish the inside??????
Some people don’t understand that trees are a renewable industry - plant, grow, cut, use, repeated endlessly, while they soak up CO2. Which is more “green friendly”, the lumber for housing industry, or cement? I tell you now it is not the latter. The tree growth used by the lumber for housing industry is trees that are constantly being renewed.
I’ve seen some modular homes you’d never be able to tell were pre-fab from the outside and only seeing the marriage walls on the inside would reveal it was.
The biggest problem with the perceived speed of modular vs. stick erection is modular dealers tend to hire clowns as sub contractors who take forever to get their jobs done.
Wait a minute! We were told a few months back that the world is headed into a sand shortage. How can we build neighborhoods of concrete houses if sand is running out?
Sand shortage could mean there won’t be enough to make glass vials for COVID vaccines
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3939900/posts
LOL. 8>)
Very well said...and there is a LOT to be said for Erf sheltered homes!
Some day her prints will come…
My favorite coffee mug printing girl is back!
Thank you.
Nothing says home like a nice cup of cofeveve...
That’s kinda how houses are built in mexico. Concrete everywhere and very little wood
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