I live near a 3d printed neighborhood in Georgetown, TX. We would have bought one if they'd had more than 3 bedroom floorplans. They are concrete and stay cool in the summer, they also all have solar panels...
Everyone I've talked to says they are wierd looking like the movie set of Edward Scissorhands or something, but it's mainly because they didn't leave old growth trees so every tree is < 5 years old (maybe for the printer to have room to move around?) and they are very very similar. People also don't like the concrete factor.
I don't know if it counts as successful but if we'd had fewer kids I'd be in one right now!
The Hudson River used to be a main manufacturing artery of the United States but has since become a relic. I still believe that region upstream of NYC could address the housing crisis plaguing the northeast of the United States. Imagine barges of housing components drifting down-river to be assembled in any coastal metro on the Atlantic coastline.
I wonder how much of home construction efficiency improvements are held back by taste for traditional appearance vs. other cost/performance characteristics.
The difference in styles between residential and commercial construction is probably an example of this. Not many commercial buildings with tar paper shingled roofs.
They made a new office building a number of years ago that I had the pleasure of watching it go up. At first it was all grey concrete that they poured, but then, they hung, like giant paintings, a brick facade on the exterior and the columns. If you hadn't seen it go up, you'd think it was a brick building. I'm sure it cost extra, but looks don't have to go out the window in the name of efficiency.
> Not many commercial buildings with tar paper shingled roofs
I mean, this is kind of true and kind of untrue. There aren't a lot of commercial roofs with literal residential asphalt shingles, but many commercial roofs are things like mod bit which are practically the same concept, just a mod bit needs to handle an extremely low to flat pitch while residential shingles assume a decent pitch to the roof. Tons are also just single-ply membranes, which often don't even last as long as a good residential asphalt shingle install.
Its not like every commercial building has a metal roof. Just look at this random commercial/industrial office park:
The only reason I can think of that houses don’t usually have metal roofs is because they cost at least double, if not triple. I have seen homeowners use metal roofs, but it’s one of the first cost reductions because a good shingle roof is already good for 30+ years.
For a business, it can make more sense as it might be a more long term structure, plus it would contain more valuable items (or at least cause more loss if business is interrupted).
> The only reason I can think of that houses don’t usually have metal roofs is because they cost at least double, if not triple
Also noise, if you live somewhere with a lot of rain.
I wonder if the longevity argument really holds, too. Anecdotally, our local public housing project invested in metal roofs many years ago (less than 30, however) but a good fraction of them have been replaced since with contemporary asphalt shingles. I do not know why they failed, but the switch back to asphalt says something.
To me it says that someone in the housing authority fell for a sales pitch on metal roofs. "Buy it once and never have to pay for a roof again." That person is now probably long gone, as is the salesman and likely the roofing contractor who installed it. The roof is now leaking, and the current administration looked at what they could afford and asphalt it is.
> Construction is famously labor intensive: direct labor makes up close to 50% of the cost of constructing a new single-family home in the US, compared to around 6 to 8% of the cost of manufacturing a car.
Is this only calculating last mile labor, or all the labor along the way? Like, for a car, does it count the cost of steel as purely non-labor costs, or do they factor in the labor cost for mining the ore, etc?
Because I feel like at the end of the day, almost all costs are 'labor' costs, they are just paid by different people/companies earlier in the process. Housing just has a lot of the labor as the final step, assembling the house on site. Cars have more of their labor at earlier stages of the process, and the assembling is mostly automated.
They don't. They come in later and do their thing as normal.
MEP workers have huge regulatory moats and trade groups with war chests which is why their bit of the process isn't being discussed here. If the tech isn't at a point where it can beat the relatively "exposed to the free market" framers and brick layers then there's no way it can fight the MEPs who have the laws and rules and codes they can leverage.
Even more labor-intensive, actually. Needs significant babysitting for things like electrical fixtures and window opening, and the final wall is a maintenance nightmare if it isn't plastered smooth.
Only because we culturally expect recessed wiring and plumbing. if we went back to knob and stick wiring and external plumbing, 3d printed homes are much easier to make.
It's kinda ridiculous that we still build walls brick by brick, on site, instead of just building most of the house elsewhere and only assemble at the site.
IIRC the cost of a stick built home is only ~15% higher than an equivalent manufactured home, but by building on site you have more flexibility for custom layouts and other choices which fit the local environment better. A modern home builder typically has a set of plans to mix and match and their build process is really dialed in -- eeking out a bit more efficiency by doing it in a factory is offset by the cost of getting the completed product on site. Plus a good chunk of the cost in a home is site prep anyway.
Also, at least in my area, the trend seems to be towards smaller lots and two story homes. There might be modular homes that could fit that niche, but currently manufactured homes are just big single story rectangles.
Eh? Such houses are now common, at least here in Europe. I live in one! Entire walls were manufactured in factory, then brought on site and assembled. But the house is not from bricks, the structural material is wood and oriented strand boards (OSB).
Difficult with brick walls, but easy with concrete walls. The Soviet Union famously did that a lot. For the brick aesthetic, just add a brick facade on top. Or insulation foam boards and plaster for a more boring but functional look
At least in the UK, a lot new development is done like this. In London there's massive amounts of new housing in the New London Vernacular style that uses brick cladding panels, either real bricks or thin "brick slip" that are fabricated off site: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_London_Vernacular
I would guess that happened a long time ago and the vast, vast majority of what looks like brick houses today are facades. Does anyone want a real brick house these days?
Are there really many parallels between a car and a house? The car is considerably more complex with dramatically less variation between builds. It is not like homes are constructed from raw materials, either, lots of the pieces are built in a factory and then brought on site to be connected.
There are enough to make meaningful comparisons vs, say, manufacturing a laptop. They're both too big to carry, and expensive enough that most people aren't able to afford more than a handful in their lives, and may possibly even just only rent one. So cars and houses are more similar in size then cellphones or a meal at a restaurant.
I live near a 3d printed neighborhood in Georgetown, TX. We would have bought one if they'd had more than 3 bedroom floorplans. They are concrete and stay cool in the summer, they also all have solar panels...
Everyone I've talked to says they are wierd looking like the movie set of Edward Scissorhands or something, but it's mainly because they didn't leave old growth trees so every tree is < 5 years old (maybe for the printer to have room to move around?) and they are very very similar. People also don't like the concrete factor.
I don't know if it counts as successful but if we'd had fewer kids I'd be in one right now!
I remember reading this article about Swedish home manufacturing two years ago, and immediately thought of the Hudson Valley (where I lived at the time) https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/08/headway/how-an-american-d...
The Hudson River used to be a main manufacturing artery of the United States but has since become a relic. I still believe that region upstream of NYC could address the housing crisis plaguing the northeast of the United States. Imagine barges of housing components drifting down-river to be assembled in any coastal metro on the Atlantic coastline.
You’d need to reform the Jones Act unless you plan to build the ships too.
I wonder how much of home construction efficiency improvements are held back by taste for traditional appearance vs. other cost/performance characteristics.
The difference in styles between residential and commercial construction is probably an example of this. Not many commercial buildings with tar paper shingled roofs.
They made a new office building a number of years ago that I had the pleasure of watching it go up. At first it was all grey concrete that they poured, but then, they hung, like giant paintings, a brick facade on the exterior and the columns. If you hadn't seen it go up, you'd think it was a brick building. I'm sure it cost extra, but looks don't have to go out the window in the name of efficiency.
> Not many commercial buildings with tar paper shingled roofs
I mean, this is kind of true and kind of untrue. There aren't a lot of commercial roofs with literal residential asphalt shingles, but many commercial roofs are things like mod bit which are practically the same concept, just a mod bit needs to handle an extremely low to flat pitch while residential shingles assume a decent pitch to the roof. Tons are also just single-ply membranes, which often don't even last as long as a good residential asphalt shingle install.
Its not like every commercial building has a metal roof. Just look at this random commercial/industrial office park:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/7X1NUTwrTUdH21o1A
Take a look around. You see a lot of metal roofs, yes. You also see membrane roofs. You see mod bit. And you'll even see some old built-up roofs.
The only reason I can think of that houses don’t usually have metal roofs is because they cost at least double, if not triple. I have seen homeowners use metal roofs, but it’s one of the first cost reductions because a good shingle roof is already good for 30+ years.
For a business, it can make more sense as it might be a more long term structure, plus it would contain more valuable items (or at least cause more loss if business is interrupted).
> The only reason I can think of that houses don’t usually have metal roofs is because they cost at least double, if not triple
Also noise, if you live somewhere with a lot of rain.
I wonder if the longevity argument really holds, too. Anecdotally, our local public housing project invested in metal roofs many years ago (less than 30, however) but a good fraction of them have been replaced since with contemporary asphalt shingles. I do not know why they failed, but the switch back to asphalt says something.
To me it says that someone in the housing authority fell for a sales pitch on metal roofs. "Buy it once and never have to pay for a roof again." That person is now probably long gone, as is the salesman and likely the roofing contractor who installed it. The roof is now leaking, and the current administration looked at what they could afford and asphalt it is.
> Construction is famously labor intensive: direct labor makes up close to 50% of the cost of constructing a new single-family home in the US, compared to around 6 to 8% of the cost of manufacturing a car.
Is this only calculating last mile labor, or all the labor along the way? Like, for a car, does it count the cost of steel as purely non-labor costs, or do they factor in the labor cost for mining the ore, etc?
Because I feel like at the end of the day, almost all costs are 'labor' costs, they are just paid by different people/companies earlier in the process. Housing just has a lot of the labor as the final step, assembling the house on site. Cars have more of their labor at earlier stages of the process, and the assembling is mostly automated.
You still have to solve all the MEPs so where does that go in your process?
They don't. They come in later and do their thing as normal.
MEP workers have huge regulatory moats and trade groups with war chests which is why their bit of the process isn't being discussed here. If the tech isn't at a point where it can beat the relatively "exposed to the free market" framers and brick layers then there's no way it can fight the MEPs who have the laws and rules and codes they can leverage.
I'm saying they can't take shortcuts like prefabbing walls without the stuff that goes in walls in them or at lesst coordinated sleeved etc
What does MEPs mean in that context?
Mechanical, electrical, and plumbing
3D printing of concrete homes ?
I wouldn't put that in the "success" category just yet
Even more labor-intensive, actually. Needs significant babysitting for things like electrical fixtures and window opening, and the final wall is a maintenance nightmare if it isn't plastered smooth.
Only because we culturally expect recessed wiring and plumbing. if we went back to knob and stick wiring and external plumbing, 3d printed homes are much easier to make.
Lego bricking with ICF is probably as best as it gets right now.
Interesting, but currently more of a novelty.
It's kinda ridiculous that we still build walls brick by brick, on site, instead of just building most of the house elsewhere and only assemble at the site.
IIRC the cost of a stick built home is only ~15% higher than an equivalent manufactured home, but by building on site you have more flexibility for custom layouts and other choices which fit the local environment better. A modern home builder typically has a set of plans to mix and match and their build process is really dialed in -- eeking out a bit more efficiency by doing it in a factory is offset by the cost of getting the completed product on site. Plus a good chunk of the cost in a home is site prep anyway.
Also, at least in my area, the trend seems to be towards smaller lots and two story homes. There might be modular homes that could fit that niche, but currently manufactured homes are just big single story rectangles.
turns out that's not much cheaper and really limits design choices and sometimes house locations
Manufactured homes are a thing. You can literally buy one for 100k-300k
We call them prefabs i.e. prefabricated.
I think the Problem is transportation of larger Units, different buildung Codes from region to region and induvidual requestt
Theres less efficiency here than would be thought. Building codes, technologies, materials, styles, needs etc vary a lot by location.
If you're interested in the topic, the author writes extensively on manufactured homes.
The most obvious reason for that is transport. The main components of houses tend to be much bigger than what fits on the back of a lorry.
Eh? Such houses are now common, at least here in Europe. I live in one! Entire walls were manufactured in factory, then brought on site and assembled. But the house is not from bricks, the structural material is wood and oriented strand boards (OSB).
Ever try putting a brick wall on a truck?
Difficult with brick walls, but easy with concrete walls. The Soviet Union famously did that a lot. For the brick aesthetic, just add a brick facade on top. Or insulation foam boards and plaster for a more boring but functional look
At least in the UK, a lot new development is done like this. In London there's massive amounts of new housing in the New London Vernacular style that uses brick cladding panels, either real bricks or thin "brick slip" that are fabricated off site: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_London_Vernacular
They did this a bit in Britain post war.
It wasn't and isn't particularly popular. I don't know the precise reasons, but I suppose the fact it was tried, and didn't work says something.
sounds like a problem engineering can't solve? Stop using bricks is an idea.
> Stop using bricks is an idea
I would guess that happened a long time ago and the vast, vast majority of what looks like brick houses today are facades. Does anyone want a real brick house these days?
Why is this ridiculous?
do you build a car from raw materials and casting every component in the same shop?
Are there really many parallels between a car and a house? The car is considerably more complex with dramatically less variation between builds. It is not like homes are constructed from raw materials, either, lots of the pieces are built in a factory and then brought on site to be connected.
There are enough to make meaningful comparisons vs, say, manufacturing a laptop. They're both too big to carry, and expensive enough that most people aren't able to afford more than a handful in their lives, and may possibly even just only rent one. So cars and houses are more similar in size then cellphones or a meal at a restaurant.
You could use the metaphor of sealed units in modern cars that can't be repaired.
And houses are expected to last longer than cars.
I'm not saying you're wrong person se, but I disagree with the analogy