Posted on 03/13/2021 5:08:12 AM PST by zeestephen
Barely a month ago, a 3D-printed house was listed for sale to the public for the first time in the U.S. Now, a small, 3D-printed community in Texas is following suit. Another, larger community in California is also in the works. In other words, 3D-printed real estate is taking off in a big way.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnbc.com ...
My son worked for a company that built panelized walls. It’s nothing exotic but these idiots thought they would be oh so disruptive to the industry. They were people who came from outside the industry and thought they could do it better than those idiot stick builders.
In reality, they had absolutely no knowledge of the trade. They were heavily leveraged and spent more than they brought in.
Even though they had jobs, they still managed to go bankrupt. They stiffed my kid for a couple paychecks. (He’s named in the bankruptcy documents)
He was a truck driver for them running flatbed semi’s at the age of 20. I told him to just keep working and getting some experience.
(after the company failed, his boss made a phone call to a lumberyard and they hired my son without an interview.)
I bet a dozen Hispanics could do it faster and cheaper with block, especially dry stack with surface bonding. Laying on surface bond coating is just like stucco and guess who all the stucco guys are in Florida. Hispanics.
Anyone ever remember Jim Walter Homes back in the day?
Little boxes on the hillside
Little boxes made of ticky tacky
Little boxes on the hillside
Little boxes all the same
There’s a pink one and a green one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they’re all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same
They transport the finished parts to the job site before morning rush hour, install everything during regular work hours without blocking streets and with much less noise, then do the whole routine over again the next work day.
Curious, which one? I too was in the industry and saw a lot of craziness.
Investors drive much of this crap. they aren’t so much interested in real solutions, but flashy founders or pie in the sky technology that obviously wont work in the real world.
Carribean still builds this way mostly. They let the roof blow off. Not really part of the structure of the house. new roof cost less than whole house. The court house in Nevis doesn’t even have windows. Here if your roof goes the house goes. dumb way to build.
They had some stupid trendy un-pronounceable name. Infastos or something like that.
Based in Grand Rapids, MI.
Funny thing was two weeks after my kid started at the lumberyard, they bought the panel production plant, so he’s still kind of working there.
The company bankrupted just before Christmas. We all got trendy motivational posters for Christmas that he liberated from the closed office. (His boss knew about it and approved)
DR Horton express homes
Helped a friend build a JW home. Substandard materials.
juat so...and anywhere the unions hold sway there will remain roadblocks to innovative cost saving construction systems.
1. in NYC, circa late 1970, when open office layouts were the flavor of the day, a office furniture manufacturer devised a panel system with, writing surface, cabinets and file drawers suspend from the modular panels. System was further enhanced with pre-wired race ways for power and comms...pop off the baseboard covers, plug and play. Outstanding system down to a flatwire system to access existing floor boxes or wall power distribution. Made for quick layout changes that could be down overnight.
One of the top ten banks had a project for 3 floors at Park Ave HQ that were to be renovated. Contract was made for the entire system to be deployed. It was to be the first major installation pf that system.
On arrival of the first truckloads of components building union electricians instituted a job action against the bank and building mgmt with other unions acting in solidarity bring everything to a halt.
Final result was the IBEW union won. The solution, union electricians were to remove the union made wiring from each panel before cubicles were erected and the return to install the wiring they had just removed. Additionaly any refiguring of the layout required union sparkies to unplug and replug the new configurations. Set the rules in NYC for any pre-wired panels. Major finacial hit to any office projects.
2. A more arcane example of IBEW thuggery came about in the theater district where all stage hands belonged to one union or the other. For some reason there was a conflict in who had jurisdiction over placing of any container of water on the stage. In the end IBEW rep, the father of a GF argued that somehow hydro-electric plants came under IBEW control, ergo water on stage in any form was to be handled by stage electricians. True story.
Not so sure. Hearing rumblings from the left that concrete is environmentally harmful so Greenies will probably try to ban it. Plastic is out. Can’t harvest trees. Think we’ll all wind up living in canvass tents.
I've never heard any noise from next door, and when we go inside, the world disappears.
They're small because the construction is fast and cheap and Asians are essentially 5 feet, 100 lbs ea. and are usually small families.
My B&S in law have three kids and as Asians share beds with kids, it all works out .... sooner or later .... somehow ... if only for a few years (etc., etc.)
Unless it includes rebar, concrete is brittle
With all of that concrete, they may have more thermal mass, but that only makes it harder to heat or cool in a climate that sees a huge yearly temperature swing.
They would be great in a desert environment with hot days and cold nights, though, just like Adobe is.
Frankly, I wouldn’t trust it, particularly if it was a home built where seismic activity is possible. FWIW, I currently live on the side of a mountain in Panama in an apartment built from shipping containers (the type you see on 18-wheelers and ships). There are many builders who have repurposed these containers into the frame of houses.
Concrete and other materials are used to make the home sturdy but there is little insulation so it can get a little cold at night and a little warm in the afternoon but there’s no AC because none is needed and electricity can be pricey. For the most part, I am comfortable in it.
A fight between IBEW and ILWU spiraled out of control and eventually caused the container ships to stop servicing our small port.
“ Think we’ll all wind up living in canvass tents.”
Canvas tents? No, straw bale houses:
https://www.wikihow.com/Build-a-Straw-Bale-House
The exterior walls are clad in insulating panels. The openings for doors and windows are framed in wood so that standard window and door frames can be inserted. This is identical to construction detailing used with cinder block, poured concrete and precast concrete construction. Nothing special at all.
The unit cost for printing grade concrete is greater than conventional materials plus there is a significant capital investment for the printing machinery. This is offset by reduced labor and the time to frame out the structure. In addition, the precision of the construction is more precise. Think of the precision and speed of CNC machining compared to drilling holes and cutting to length by hand.
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