3D printing a house is starting to be open sourced
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Unfortunately, projects like these are where "makers" and engineers part ways. It's the boring bits of engineering that always get people: costs, safety standards, and scalability. In this case, for example, where does the foundation for the house come from? You can't 3D print it. You need an earth mover or a bunch of Mexicans with shovels to dig it out. Ok there goes one of your biggest costs. Now on to printing your house. Concrete is pricey even before you create a fancy mix design that can be extruded and not slump. Any cost savings here? probably not. Now your house needs a roof. Well, if you can't print overcuts with plastic you're not doing it with concrete, so a standard truss it is. Again, no cost savings. If you've got this far, you haven't saved any money and we don't even know if your house will pass structural/safety muster. I hate to be a downer, but a lot of these idea are just bad. If you want cheap construction, we'll have to look elsewhere.
Cheap construction would be better achieved by factories the size of cities building pre-fab homes in sections and having them shipped to the location. Then the only real on site work would be the foundation
You have just described single (and double) wide trailers. And they do tend to be among the cheapest (if not the cheapest) way to go on a cost per square foot basis and can be built to local building codes and therefore be equivalent in construction to a site-built house. But "only dumb rednecks live in those", so people look for any solution that isn't that.
Neighbor just set one up. Had poured a slab on his property that I walked by every day wondering what it was for, then one day there was a double-wide plopped down on it. Looks good.
So what's the hang up on "trailers"? Because I admit I feel a bit judgmental myself.
Traditionally they are legally classified as "trailers" and are built to a separate Federal code (colloquially referred to as the "HUD code/standard" because it's maintained by the Department of Housing and Urban Development). There are two issues with this:
But nowadays most manufacturers will build them to either HUD code or building code, and in the latter case they are built to exactly the same standards as if the house were built on-site and in a lot of states are legally classified the same as a "traditionally" built house.
Of course there's the larger issue of perception and the simple fact that any method of "cheap construction" is going to be seen as low status. In large part by definition, because it's going to attract a lot of people who can't afford any other option
They don't hold their value like real houses, so financially it's more like renting.