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jyl jyl is online now
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Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: Nor California & Pac NW
Posts: 24,851
Garage
Looks like the printing is of the foundation forms and then part of the wall structure. Everything else - including roof and floors - is built conventionally. That determines the maximum amount of time and money this process can save. If foundation and walls are 20% of total “hard” house construction cost, and printing is 80% cheaper than conventional methods, then hard cost can be reduced by 16% (just a made-up example).

The reduction in total house cost may be much less than that, because printing doesn’t affect the “soft” costs (financing, permitting, selling, overhead) or the land cost. For the typical single family house in the US, soft and land costs can be comparable to hard costs. In other situations, that may not be so.

Concrete is not exactly an environmentally benign construction material. From an environmental standpoint, it may be better to use wood - renewable resource, sequesters carbon.

The ability to create curved and complex shapes is cool, but maybe of limited use for most housing.

Also, I am unclear on whether the void between the inner and outer walls has to be filled with rebar and poured cement, or if you can print an internal structure to the wall.
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Old 12-20-2022, 06:41 AM
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