13 ms·

Cheap 3D-printed home is a start for the 1B who lack shelter

139 points by Dangeranger 9y ago

kevin_b_er 9y ago
Article says they hope to bring the cost down to to $4000 from $15000. Meanwhile projects like this exist: http://www.300house.com/ http://www.300house.com/ That's $300. So what's revolutionary about $15000 or $4000 for a "cheap" home?
- proaralyst 9y ago
  I could be wrong but clicking through that website I got the impression the $300 house was a specification they haven't got a design for. So this could be revolutionary in that it exists.
- djtriptych 9y ago
  Interesting article, but odd to frame the cheapest possible house as the last word in ultra-affordable housing. Has anyone actually built one of these? Would Americans live in one?
  - morganjlopes 9y ago
    It is built. v1 was built in Austin,TX (sxsw) and we'll be rolling out to the developing world later this year
donquichotte 9y ago
> Using the Vulcan printer, ICON can print an entire home for $10,000 and plans to bring costs down to $4,000 per house. OK, according to the "global wealth pyramid" [1], a graphical representation of global wealth distribution, the bottom 3 billion own less than 10'000$. I'm not saying that being poor is equal to lacking shelter, but there is probably a correlation there. 3d printing homes is cool and might have potential, but it won't help a poor farmer in rural Azerbaijan get shelter. It would be great if the media could stop presenting this as a panacea to homelessness. [1] https://www.credit-suisse.com/corporate/en/articles/news-and-expertise/the-global-wealth-pyramid-2016-201612.html https://www.credit-suisse.com/corporate/en/articles/news-and...
- ejstronge 9y ago
  I agree - this is very cool, but it's hard to imagine that the kids depicted running around slums will be the beneficiaries, outside of targeted NGO efforts.
- ghostbrainalpha 9y ago
  Sorry, I'm confused by this. Almost no one in the United States owns their homes. Can't the poor farmer in Azerbaijan finance this just like we do? The payments on a 30 year loan like we have for $4,000 would be like $10 a month before interest.
  - kragen 9y ago
    No. Generally speaking, this kind of low-cost financing only exists in rich countries. In poor countries, interest rates, default rates, and often inflation rates are high and unpredictable. (There may be exceptions, and in particular I've never been to Azerbaijan, but I don't know of any exceptions.) One element that contributes to the unavailability of financing is the unpredictable nature of many people's land tenure; I wrote a bit about that in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16569078 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16569078
    - jimnotgym 9y ago
      Then wouldn't a low cost way to introduce proper land title and efficient banking systems to third world countries be a better use of our first world technology/skills/knowledge?
      - kragen 9y ago
        As it turns out, invading "third world" countries, overthrowing their existing institutions, and installing "proper" systems designed in "first world" countries has been tried. It was, broadly speaking, the foreign policy of Europe toward poor countries during roughly the period 1600 to 1950. It was called "colonialism", and it caused the problems we see there today, as well as much worse problems (up to and including the extermination of entire populations) while it was going on. I do not think that attempting to re-establish colonialism, as you propose, would be a good use of our technology, skills, or knowledge. However, Peter Thiel and the current government of Honduras seem to disagree.
ch4s3 9y ago
I'm never quite sure what these approaches add to prefab. This process costs $10k to produce up to an 800 sq ft (74m^2) home. They say this is a fraction of the cost of the average American home, but the average new American home since ~2013 is 2500 sq ft (232 m^2), so of course its a fraction of that, and I guess it cuts out the labor. However, I would imagine that even in El Salvador, the principal cost of a new home is acquiring the land. Surely labor and materials are cheaper there, so what am I missing here?
- maxerickson 9y ago
  Outside of cities land is not a big component of the cost. There's acre lots near town here that are $10,000; further away prices go down.
  - usrusr 9y ago
    But is there much homelessness to solve outside of cities? When I think of poor rural areas I think of abandoned houses, not of people sleeping under the stars for lack of novel construction techniques. The "help the poor" angle could be a clever attention hack though, if the technology is fast and cheap enough there might be a nice market in civil engineering somewhere between concrete and gabions to pivot to.
    - maxerickson 9y ago
      I was just making a narrow point about construction of homes in the US. People that want to live in exclusive areas pay a lot for land, others not so much. And for homelessness, the problem isn't really that housing costs a lot to build, it's that no one wants to build it. This is probably true in a lot of places that aren't as wealthy as the US. The town planning commission here just rejected a $10 million project that was mostly low income housing. Some of them had the brass to come right out and say that they didn't want low income people living in that part of town and some of the others used the "historic character" of the shoddy commercial building presently on the site as a fig leaf. One guy dissembled, saying that the project should happen somewhere else. But of course the developer has a different set of concerns and won't necessarily be willing to make the same investment in a different location.
RobertRoberts 9y ago
I have seen a lot of these "neat" solutions over the past few years. And the counter arguments I've seen are "we already have this, it's 10x cheaper, faster to setup, etc...". These arguments are based on things like the Ikea shelters/homes, or other prefab stuff that's _super_ cheap. But, the arguments against these is that it doesn't provide income for local labor, or use local resources... but neither does this 3d printed house. So, where is this all really going, when we have multiple solutions right now that could help people, but they are not being used? Is the problem actually political and corruption, and not technical or monetary? Or are these other solutions just as much hot air, and we really do need a new tech to fill in the gap?
- pjc50 9y ago
  Housing is rarely limited by construction, it's limited by land rights and infrastructure buildout. Oh, and credit availability; even down to "microcredit" for the really poor places.
  - RobertRoberts 9y ago
    Then doesn't seem like then the most likely successful solution will be the _easiest_ to get past the bureaucracy? Seems like a discouraging thought. Maybe a fancy 3d printed solution would appeal to some politicians ego, and that's the trick to getting it to happen?
    - pjc50 9y ago
      There's an excellent discussion of this in The Other Path : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Other_Path:_The_Economic_Answer_to_Terrorism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Other_Path:_The_Economic... Basically the author points out that so much housing in Peru was slums built on illegally occupied land that technically belongs to the government, what was needed was a route to legitimacy. Give people proper title to the land they had already had possession of for decades and suddenly they can use it as collateral. Legitimacy also causes people to choose more durable building methods. If there's a risk of being thrown out there's no point making anything more than a tin shed.
petermcneeley 9y ago
Constructing walls by laying down layers of cement does not constitute a 3d printed home. How does this automatic wall maker compare to El Salvador labor in cost and quality?
- VikingCoder 9y ago
  This is exactly what I think of when I think of "3d printed home." I'm curious what you think it would mean?
  - petermcneeley 9y ago
    I think of a house as more than just concrete verticals. A house has insulation, wiring, wood framing, windows, plumbing, heating, flooring, siding, roofing, ventilation not to mention all the decor that is considered part of a house. Just look at the picture in the article and ask yourself what was "printed" in that image. I think the only thing that was printed was that ugly concrete vertical layered stuff.
    - VikingCoder 9y ago
      So, how about "3d printed house frame"?
BatFastard 9y ago
Interesting idea. What's the cost of this home vs a timber home? Life span, cost of upkeep, R factor, etc. From my observations building the frame of the house is relatively quick here in the states. I would be that the habitat for humanities groups could put up a similar size house frame in less than 8 hours. So what is the advantage here?
maxerickson 9y ago
Comparing the price to a "typical" American home is ridiculous. The typical American home is not a small rectangle. Compare the price to a similar structure built using the same techniques used to build a home and you end up right in the same ballpark: http://84homes.84lumber.com/Garage%20prices.pdf http://84homes.84lumber.com/Garage%20prices.pdf
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- smacktoward 9y ago
  The typical American home is not a small rectangle. So we should just compare it to the typical Bay Area home then? (I kid, I kid)
893helios 9y ago
How is this in any way locally sustainable. If you want to shelter people then the people need to be able to build and sustain that level of technology.
raise_throw 9y ago
Isn't it the case that the vast majority of people lacking housing are really lacking in land (or at least, stable land)? $10K on a permanent structure is only viable if you have permanent title on the land below it. There are places in the UK in which you could buy brick-and-mortar constructed homes, fully wired in to electricity, water, gas and telephone lines with a freehold for approx 5x that - the cost usually isn't prohibitive as such, it's the fact that they're in the wrong place (local jobs pay barely anything, or the community is bad). Similarly I can go out and buy a car for 300 GBP, but the insurance costs (especially if young), excise duty, fuel costs, ongoing maintenance absolutely dwarf it. I suppose what I'm saying is that I don't feel construction costs are relevant here, there are a whole bunch of regulatory / community / cultural issues in play.
DoreenMichele 9y ago
One of the problems with such schemes is that it is not vernacular housing. It is a top down, one size fits all scheme that contains zero local knowledge and no means to incorporate local knowledge. Vernacular housing is local traditional housing built with local materials and suited to the local climate. So, adobe in the American Southwest and deep porches in the American Southeast so you can have windows open in rainy weather. It typically winds up working about as well as transplanting a New York apartment to a farm. A New York apartment makes sense in New York. It doesn't make sense on a farm.
- mikepurvis 9y ago
  ... and there was even just a discussion a few days ago on HN about Fordlandia: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16537630 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16537630
- snissn 9y ago
  "one size fits all scheme" Considering the innovation is in 3-D printing a home, I think it can be customizable
  - DoreenMichele 9y ago
    The missing key ingredient will be local information. The hoi polloi from 1st world countries are unlikely to listen to uneducated 3rd world peasants. In the Great Depression, they gave free bathtubs to dirt poor people in shacks in Appalachia. The shacks had no running water. The locals stuck them on the front porch and used them to store coal, fuel for cooking and winter heat. The monied types that gave them the tubs mocked them for their idiocy. What kind of fool puts a bathtub on the front porch and fills it with coal? Coming up with multiple variations of top down templates doesn't fix the essential problem here.
    - d0lph 9y ago
      > The hoi polloi from 1st world countries are unlikely to listen to uneducated 3rd world peasants. Kind of harsh and presumptuous.
braderhart 9y ago
Having adequate mental health services in the United States would be a good start.
shiftpgdn 9y ago
The folks that put together this 3D printer maybe should have visited a country like Mexico to understand the houses are already put together ad-hoc with cinder blocks. You can put together a cinder block house for about $10,000 [1] and pay as you go over months or years requiring no loan or interaction with a bank. You can carry cinder blocks by hand or truck up the side of a mountain and it doesn't require much skill to put together. [1] https://www.curbed.com/2015/1/2/10006114/mexico-affordable-housing-box-house-s-ar https://www.curbed.com/2015/1/2/10006114/mexico-affordable-h...
- technofiend 9y ago
  And that is including the massive cement markups found in Mexico thanks to PEMEX. Imagine if Mexicans could purchase cement at the prices their neighbors to the North do. See https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB1019426769244153760 https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB1019426769244153760 for a dated explanation.
kragen 9y ago
Hard to tell, but it sounds like they're 3-D printing the building envelope, minus vapor barriers and whatnot. But nowadays the envelope is not the expensive part of a building, although it is the most visible. Plumbing, electrical, HVAC, floor finishing, decor, and so on accounts for most of the building cost. For some reason they aren't mentioned in the story, probably because nobody has a credible automation approach to them yet. If you want to reduce the cost of the building envelope, possibly superadobe, shotcrete on airforms, ferrocrete, and flexible domes are better bets than 3-D printing of concrete. (The geodesic dome was conceived specifically as a solution to this problem, but I'm not convinced it actually does a good job at it.) What's the current solution these things are competing with? Here in Argentina, the standard low-cost construction approach in the villas miserias is masonry with hollow bricks (18×33 cm), which cost 50¢. So a 6m×6m×3m building envelope requires about 1200 bricks, costing US$600 (AR$12000) if you buy them new instead of scavenging, plus some mortar and a corrugated-metal roof, which add a bit to the cost. It takes several days or even, at times, weeks to finish the construction; usually the family who live there build the house themselves, which is less of an opportunity cost than it sounds like with the unemployment rate as high as it is, especially among youth. Some families pour concrete slabs, others use dirt floors. So, roughly speaking, this approach has to come down in cost by 10× to even compete with our current vernacular architecture, let alone improve on its pricing. The concrete-3-D-printing approaches I've seen, like Andrey Rudenko's https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQ5Elbvvr1M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQ5Elbvvr1M, all share the drawback that they require a long time, because you have to wait for the lower layers of the construction to cure a bit before you can add more layers. Their big advantage is not that they're cheaper than pouring concrete into forms — although they may be, especially if you're building a large building or a dense construction — but that they have a lot of freedom of geometry.
- kiliantics 9y ago
  Not to mention the cost of the land... Short of a radical change in how our society works, the only realistic solution to homelessness is going to have to be some kind of decent social housing. Maybe it will somehow be cheaply 3D-printed but the government is going to have to buy the land first. (That, or stop making it exclusive to the rich.) Access to land was the original problem here (since Enclosure Acts) and it has to be part of the solution.
rubarb 9y ago
A house, any house, needs to be placed on some plot of land. So as for those who lack shelter, do they already have a piece of land and just can’t cheaply build on it, or is it not having land at all that is the problem
nabla9 9y ago
How much homelessness exists in developing world because houses are too expensive to build? $4,000 already builds a nice house in many areas, especially when labor is very cheap. To build a house one must first own or rent the land where to build the house. Investing $4,000 for a house you build illegally is stupid. When city planning and zoning is inadequate and ownership uncertain, slums naturally emerge.
jaclaz 9y ago
At first sight it seems to me like it is the usual "flawed" approach to third world problems by people having only first world experience. Loosely building a house is made of costs coming out of: 1) base materials (and the plants to make them and the logistics to bring them on site) 2) equipment 3) labour In "first world" countries they can be roughly weighted (as percentage of building costs) as: 1) 40%-50% 2) 10%-15% 3) 35%-50% So everyone is trying to make more "industrial" the building using prefabricated components, standardized parts, etc, attempting to reduce the labour on site, it is logical. In not-developed countries, usually pure labour is extremely cheap, while materials (and the logistics) are extremely expensive, besides equipment that (not being available for rent or sub-contracting on the local market) needs to be imported and is only justified on larger projects. It is not unusual that the same percentages in a not-developed country become: 1) 70%-75% 2) 15%-20% 3) 5%-10% Additionally the problem might be finding locally skilled labour capable of managing the high tech equipment.
- morganjlopes 9y ago
  This is a very thoughtful breakdown and we appreciate the interest. We (New Story) have been building houses in developing countries using traditional methods for over 3 years now. Developing this tool is in direct response to the issues we've encountered on the ground. As we look at the 1 billion+ people without adequate housing, this and innovations like it are designed to increase the speed, efficiency, and quality with which homes can be built for those in need.
- ddingus 9y ago
  Skill is a significant factor. Tech can mitigate it as can mentoring and enabling at scale. Quality matters. The better the homes are, the better the return on investment and quality of life is, both being necessary goals.
  - abakker 9y ago
    I'd say technology can also increase the burden of skill. I.e. an average jigsaw and pencil line requires less skill and is safer than operating a CNC router, until the router gets a ton of failsafes, sensors, etc implemented. the Anti-crash features probably cost more in a CNC than the rest of the machine does (and that is why mine doesn't have any except the minimum). You're right that quality matters. My take on this is designing for poor tolerances to still yield strong structures. This 3D printing approach looks good for some aspects, but the lack of a roof seems disqualifying for me. The roof is the hard part, and potentially the easiest part to do incorrectly/unsafely. I'm surprised they didn't just print in crenelations in the top edge to allow drop-in roof joists. a simple shed roof seems like it could have easily been integrated.
CharlesMerriam2 9y ago
Technology is not always the solution to all problems. 1. You could ameliorate the misery of homelessness by providing a low cost "locker" system where people could store a cubic meter of so of goods while homeless. 2. There are various low cost home plans, shelters made from a single sheet of plywood, hot-bunk and ultra high density housing plans. 3. So far, no one has a sustainable economic model that would encourage an municipality to compete for the existing homeless. Both architecture and civil engineering are the wrong advances to solve this problem.
fruzz 9y ago
They want to get costs down to $4,000. You can already build a home of that size for $4,000. The lack of permanent shelter for the world's poorest isn't a technology problem.
m23khan 9y ago
I applaud the intention behind it but it would be yet another addition to such endeavors. Problem is not the lack of such ideas, the problem is lack of any organized approach to address this problem at a Global Stage. Similar to World coming together to fight against measles and polio, basic human needs such as shelter, etc. need to be met.
theNJR 9y ago
This seems like a better solution for the massive homeless populations in the United States. These could be govt funded and placed on state owned land. I'd love to see it tested out in California. Los Angeles funded the $1.2b proposition HHH. We have around 58,000 homeless. For less than half the allocated funds, you've built a house for all of them. Yes, it's more complicated than that. But it's a start.
- jeffreyrogers 9y ago
  They need jobs too, so if you're going to house homeless people it probably makes more sense to have dorm style housing somewhere close to jobs they can do, rather than individual homes farther out.
Matth3wMarshall 9y ago
Hi, this is Matthew, one of the cofounders at New Story (YC S15). We're the nonprofit developing this 3D printed home. I'd like to share why we decided to invest in an innovation like this and where we're headed. For context, in 3 years, we've built over 1,000 homes in 11 communities around the world through local partners. The challenge we face is monumental; there are more than a billion people across the globe living without safe shelter. To make a dent in that number, our ability to scale up has to change. Steady, linear improvements will never reach the total addressable market of families in need. We believe R&D and product innovation is essential with a problem of this magnitude. We have to take big swings with forward-thinking technology to achieve a quantum leap in speed, affordability, and quality. Our goal is to help power anyone building homes for the poor — governments and non-profits alike — to do their best work. As we make these strides, it means more families around the world will have safe shelter and can better actualize their potential. We’re looking at a one billion person deficit of a basic human need. We believe maintaining the status quo is irresponsible — it’s terrifying to us — as it’ll never tackle this deficit. Our hypothesis today is that this breakthrough to reach more families can be achieved through robotics and 3D home printing. A year ago, the technology we needed didn’t exist. That’s when we began working with ICON to create a solution to a seemingly unsolvable problem. The exciting result is “the Vulcan,” a 3D Home Printer designed to print a home for less than $4,000 in less than 24 hours. This robotic breakthrough delivers: * Cost decrease (from $6,500/home to ~$4,000 and even lower future cost) * Speed increase (from ~15 days to 12–24hrs to build one home) * Improved quality and customization of the home unit for families More here -> newstorycharity.org/3d-home We'd love to answer any and all questions.
- nickthemagicman 9y ago
  Your project is great! When will they be ready for consumers? Will they be available in the US?
- CodeWriter23 9y ago
  I’m curious about how the concrete is reinforced and how using reinforcing materials interacts with the printing process.
- 9y ago
thedonkeycometh 9y ago
Looks like they're chasing charity money to build a unsustainable first world product using non-local technology and materials. See also: Haiti
JackFr 9y ago
This is ludicrous. It's the solution one comes up with if they haven't given a minute to ask why 1B people don't have adequate shelter. I don't think this will move the needle a bit.
rdiddly 9y ago
Well god bless good intentions, and it's a cool idea, but it seems better-suited to the first world than the third. None of the naysayers have yet mentioned the fact that concrete (especially its ingredient Portland cement) is one of the most energy- and greenhouse-gas-intensive building materials available. (It's made by baking certain minerals in an oven at high temperature.) We who live in large, energy-intensive houses would actually do better for the environment, and for global housing inequity, by living outdoors and in improvised huts of natural materials, rather than trying to get the people who are doing it right to come "up" to an Austin, TX standard of living. But nobody wants to hear that kind of idea. Therefore, we wait until nature imposes that solution on us.
mrfusion 9y ago
Offshoot question. Why can’t we do this with plastic. Plastic sheds hold up great. And plastic lasts for 1000s of years.
- leggomylibro 9y ago
  Well, one concern may be that plastic lasts for 1000s of years. What do you do when you decide to renovate a village of ten thousand plastic silos or boxes? Transporting and recycling that volume of material would probably be expensive, even if it were a type of plastic that was largely recoverable without losing much of its material properties.
deleted 9y ago
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jimnotgym 9y ago
I used to be in the home-building industry... With a team of three carpenters a hand-saw and hammers I could build a house like the one in the picture in 48 hours out of a sustainable material - softwood. With a nailgun I could go quicker still. I could use a 4x2 studding wall, plywood, breather membrane, counter-batten, clad with larch featheredge. Once up a vapour barrier could stapled inside and recycled paper insulation blown in. Inside that I could line out with fire resistant plasterboard (drywall to my transatlantic cousins) (backed with urethane if extra insulation is needed). This design is easily prefabricated if desired. To contrast with the concrete one this would a) use sustainable materials b) meet the building code of a developed nation. If you are dead set on a concrete wall then just build a set of plywood forms (shuttering as it was called in my day) and cast it in place. A day to put the forms up and pour. The forms are reusable too once set. Now you have a bunker to insulate, waterproof and line out. In the UK you would need to build some kind of studding inside your pill-box for insulation and damp control, much like the 'barn-conversions' the UK is full of. This makes the concrete bit semi-redundant. Sorry but I think this is a poor application of 3d printing. All we need now is a start-up to build a house with a cloud-based block-chain to get the VC's really excited. If you want to look at some really quick constructions there are the brilliant post war 'pre-fabs' of the UK, designed to replace housing lost to bombing. Some could be assembled on-site in 4 hours! There are many still in use today. If it wasn't for the amount of asbestos used there may have been many more still remaining. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prefabs_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prefabs_in_the_United_Kingdom
Animats 9y ago
It's just poured concrete. Building house shells from poured concrete is done worldwide. Edison started that; his system for low-cost housing used standard forms that locked together. Then you pour in concrete, wait, remove the forms, and you have a house. He even built in concrete furniture, which wasn't popular. Much of the world lives in poured-concrete apartment blocks. It's just so cheap. The main problem is crap concrete mixes. If you want to improve concrete construction, come up with a hand-held device where you stick a probe into the mix and it tells you if it's OK. This has been tried a few times.[1][2] Just pouring on concrete like that doesn't compact it properly. Compare the Lil Bubba curb making machine, a simple machine which makes concrete curbs.[3] It's a slip-form machine; the form gives the concrete a smooth edge and top, and as someone shovels in more concrete, it compacts it and pushes itself along. The 3D concrete printing people need to develop something as good as the Lil Bubba. Then they can make flat, solid walls in place. Some of the competing machines have some slip-form guides, so they get a flat surface. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQ_WqvjJtDw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQ_WqvjJtDw [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8z-iebHRxJk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8z-iebHRxJk [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJZMpu4MKn8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJZMpu4MKn8
- baybal2 9y ago
  >It's just poured concrete. Building house shells from poured concrete is done worldwide. Edison started that; his system for low-cost housing used standard forms that locked together. Then you pour in concrete, wait, remove the forms, and you have a house. He even built in concrete furniture, which wasn't popular. Totally true. And these days it is possible to go even further than that. Concrete construction can be made even cheaper if the cost is a genuine impediment. If material cost is the issue, you can use large aggregate filler, foaming agents, flyash based cements. If it is the time that is at premium, than you can go for SIPs or stay in place formworks. If workforce is the limiting factor, go for larger concrete pours with concrete flowability enhancers.
hoosieree 9y ago
Replace "concrete" with "lunar soil" and we're talking.[1] [1]: https://www.space.com/19602-moon-colony-3d-printing-lunar-dirt.html https://www.space.com/19602-moon-colony-3d-printing-lunar-di...
Nomentatus 9y ago
There's a reason concrete isn't generally used for housing : it retains heat very well in the summer, and transmits cold in the winter just as well. A double shell or foamy concrete could solve this, however.
wheresmyusern 9y ago
this is a waste of time. besides all the great points made elsewhere, about the availability of land, there is the fact that this technique does not provide a good house. concrete houses are usually re-enforced with steel. where is the re-enforcement? concrete is supposed to have "aggregate." without it, you basically have a pile of hardened mortar that expands and contracts way too much when exposed to water.

139 points by Dangeranger 9y ago

Article says they hope to bring the cost down to to $4000 from $15000. Meanwhile projects like this exist: http://www.300house.com/ http://www.300house.com/ That's $300. So what's revolutionary about $15000 or $4000 for a "cheap" home?

proaralyst 9y ago
I could be wrong but clicking through that website I got the impression the $300 house was a specification they haven't got a design for. So this could be revolutionary in that it exists.
djtriptych 9y ago
Interesting article, but odd to frame the cheapest possible house as the last word in ultra-affordable housing. Has anyone actually built one of these? Would Americans live in one?
- morganjlopes 9y ago
  It is built. v1 was built in Austin,TX (sxsw) and we'll be rolling out to the developing world later this year

donquichotte 9y ago

> Using the Vulcan printer, ICON can print an entire home for $10,000 and plans to bring costs down to $4,000 per house. OK, according to the "global wealth pyramid" [1], a graphical representation of global wealth distribution, the bottom 3 billion own less than 10'000$. I'm not saying that being poor is equal to lacking shelter, but there is probably a correlation there. 3d printing homes is cool and might have potential, but it won't help a poor farmer in rural Azerbaijan get shelter. It would be great if the media could stop presenting this as a panacea to homelessness. [1] https://www.credit-suisse.com/corporate/en/articles/news-and-expertise/the-global-wealth-pyramid-2016-201612.html https://www.credit-suisse.com/corporate/en/articles/news-and...

ejstronge 9y ago
I agree - this is very cool, but it's hard to imagine that the kids depicted running around slums will be the beneficiaries, outside of targeted NGO efforts.
ghostbrainalpha 9y ago
Sorry, I'm confused by this. Almost no one in the United States owns their homes. Can't the poor farmer in Azerbaijan finance this just like we do? The payments on a 30 year loan like we have for $4,000 would be like $10 a month before interest.
- kragen 9y ago
  No. Generally speaking, this kind of low-cost financing only exists in rich countries. In poor countries, interest rates, default rates, and often inflation rates are high and unpredictable. (There may be exceptions, and in particular I've never been to Azerbaijan, but I don't know of any exceptions.) One element that contributes to the unavailability of financing is the unpredictable nature of many people's land tenure; I wrote a bit about that in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16569078 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16569078
  - jimnotgym 9y ago
    Then wouldn't a low cost way to introduce proper land title and efficient banking systems to third world countries be a better use of our first world technology/skills/knowledge?
    - kragen 9y ago
      As it turns out, invading "third world" countries, overthrowing their existing institutions, and installing "proper" systems designed in "first world" countries has been tried. It was, broadly speaking, the foreign policy of Europe toward poor countries during roughly the period 1600 to 1950. It was called "colonialism", and it caused the problems we see there today, as well as much worse problems (up to and including the extermination of entire populations) while it was going on. I do not think that attempting to re-establish colonialism, as you propose, would be a good use of our technology, skills, or knowledge. However, Peter Thiel and the current government of Honduras seem to disagree.

ch4s3 9y ago

I'm never quite sure what these approaches add to prefab. This process costs $10k to produce up to an 800 sq ft (74m^2) home. They say this is a fraction of the cost of the average American home, but the average new American home since ~2013 is 2500 sq ft (232 m^2), so of course its a fraction of that, and I guess it cuts out the labor. However, I would imagine that even in El Salvador, the principal cost of a new home is acquiring the land. Surely labor and materials are cheaper there, so what am I missing here?

maxerickson 9y ago
Outside of cities land is not a big component of the cost. There's acre lots near town here that are $10,000; further away prices go down.
- usrusr 9y ago
  But is there much homelessness to solve outside of cities? When I think of poor rural areas I think of abandoned houses, not of people sleeping under the stars for lack of novel construction techniques. The "help the poor" angle could be a clever attention hack though, if the technology is fast and cheap enough there might be a nice market in civil engineering somewhere between concrete and gabions to pivot to.
  - maxerickson 9y ago
    I was just making a narrow point about construction of homes in the US. People that want to live in exclusive areas pay a lot for land, others not so much. And for homelessness, the problem isn't really that housing costs a lot to build, it's that no one wants to build it. This is probably true in a lot of places that aren't as wealthy as the US. The town planning commission here just rejected a $10 million project that was mostly low income housing. Some of them had the brass to come right out and say that they didn't want low income people living in that part of town and some of the others used the "historic character" of the shoddy commercial building presently on the site as a fig leaf. One guy dissembled, saying that the project should happen somewhere else. But of course the developer has a different set of concerns and won't necessarily be willing to make the same investment in a different location.

RobertRoberts 9y ago

I have seen a lot of these "neat" solutions over the past few years. And the counter arguments I've seen are "we already have this, it's 10x cheaper, faster to setup, etc...". These arguments are based on things like the Ikea shelters/homes, or other prefab stuff that's _super_ cheap. But, the arguments against these is that it doesn't provide income for local labor, or use local resources... but neither does this 3d printed house. So, where is this all really going, when we have multiple solutions right now that could help people, but they are not being used? Is the problem actually political and corruption, and not technical or monetary? Or are these other solutions just as much hot air, and we really do need a new tech to fill in the gap?

pjc50 9y ago
Housing is rarely limited by construction, it's limited by land rights and infrastructure buildout. Oh, and credit availability; even down to "microcredit" for the really poor places.
- RobertRoberts 9y ago
  Then doesn't seem like then the most likely successful solution will be the _easiest_ to get past the bureaucracy? Seems like a discouraging thought. Maybe a fancy 3d printed solution would appeal to some politicians ego, and that's the trick to getting it to happen?
  - pjc50 9y ago
    There's an excellent discussion of this in The Other Path : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Other_Path:_The_Economic_Answer_to_Terrorism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Other_Path:_The_Economic... Basically the author points out that so much housing in Peru was slums built on illegally occupied land that technically belongs to the government, what was needed was a route to legitimacy. Give people proper title to the land they had already had possession of for decades and suddenly they can use it as collateral. Legitimacy also causes people to choose more durable building methods. If there's a risk of being thrown out there's no point making anything more than a tin shed.

petermcneeley 9y ago

Constructing walls by laying down layers of cement does not constitute a 3d printed home. How does this automatic wall maker compare to El Salvador labor in cost and quality?

VikingCoder 9y ago
This is exactly what I think of when I think of "3d printed home." I'm curious what you think it would mean?
- petermcneeley 9y ago
  I think of a house as more than just concrete verticals. A house has insulation, wiring, wood framing, windows, plumbing, heating, flooring, siding, roofing, ventilation not to mention all the decor that is considered part of a house. Just look at the picture in the article and ask yourself what was "printed" in that image. I think the only thing that was printed was that ugly concrete vertical layered stuff.
  - VikingCoder 9y ago
    So, how about "3d printed house frame"?

BatFastard 9y ago

Interesting idea. What's the cost of this home vs a timber home? Life span, cost of upkeep, R factor, etc. From my observations building the frame of the house is relatively quick here in the states. I would be that the habitat for humanities groups could put up a similar size house frame in less than 8 hours. So what is the advantage here?

maxerickson 9y ago

Comparing the price to a "typical" American home is ridiculous. The typical American home is not a small rectangle. Compare the price to a similar structure built using the same techniques used to build a home and you end up right in the same ballpark: http://84homes.84lumber.com/Garage%20prices.pdf http://84homes.84lumber.com/Garage%20prices.pdf

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smacktoward 9y ago
The typical American home is not a small rectangle. So we should just compare it to the typical Bay Area home then? (I kid, I kid)

893helios 9y ago

How is this in any way locally sustainable. If you want to shelter people then the people need to be able to build and sustain that level of technology.

raise_throw 9y ago

Isn't it the case that the vast majority of people lacking housing are really lacking in land (or at least, stable land)? $10K on a permanent structure is only viable if you have permanent title on the land below it. There are places in the UK in which you could buy brick-and-mortar constructed homes, fully wired in to electricity, water, gas and telephone lines with a freehold for approx 5x that - the cost usually isn't prohibitive as such, it's the fact that they're in the wrong place (local jobs pay barely anything, or the community is bad). Similarly I can go out and buy a car for 300 GBP, but the insurance costs (especially if young), excise duty, fuel costs, ongoing maintenance absolutely dwarf it. I suppose what I'm saying is that I don't feel construction costs are relevant here, there are a whole bunch of regulatory / community / cultural issues in play.

DoreenMichele 9y ago

One of the problems with such schemes is that it is not vernacular housing. It is a top down, one size fits all scheme that contains zero local knowledge and no means to incorporate local knowledge. Vernacular housing is local traditional housing built with local materials and suited to the local climate. So, adobe in the American Southwest and deep porches in the American Southeast so you can have windows open in rainy weather. It typically winds up working about as well as transplanting a New York apartment to a farm. A New York apartment makes sense in New York. It doesn't make sense on a farm.

mikepurvis 9y ago
... and there was even just a discussion a few days ago on HN about Fordlandia: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16537630 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16537630
snissn 9y ago
"one size fits all scheme" Considering the innovation is in 3-D printing a home, I think it can be customizable
- DoreenMichele 9y ago
  The missing key ingredient will be local information. The hoi polloi from 1st world countries are unlikely to listen to uneducated 3rd world peasants. In the Great Depression, they gave free bathtubs to dirt poor people in shacks in Appalachia. The shacks had no running water. The locals stuck them on the front porch and used them to store coal, fuel for cooking and winter heat. The monied types that gave them the tubs mocked them for their idiocy. What kind of fool puts a bathtub on the front porch and fills it with coal? Coming up with multiple variations of top down templates doesn't fix the essential problem here.
  - d0lph 9y ago
    > The hoi polloi from 1st world countries are unlikely to listen to uneducated 3rd world peasants. Kind of harsh and presumptuous.

braderhart 9y ago

Having adequate mental health services in the United States would be a good start.

shiftpgdn 9y ago

The folks that put together this 3D printer maybe should have visited a country like Mexico to understand the houses are already put together ad-hoc with cinder blocks. You can put together a cinder block house for about $10,000 [1] and pay as you go over months or years requiring no loan or interaction with a bank. You can carry cinder blocks by hand or truck up the side of a mountain and it doesn't require much skill to put together. [1] https://www.curbed.com/2015/1/2/10006114/mexico-affordable-housing-box-house-s-ar https://www.curbed.com/2015/1/2/10006114/mexico-affordable-h...

technofiend 9y ago
And that is including the massive cement markups found in Mexico thanks to PEMEX. Imagine if Mexicans could purchase cement at the prices their neighbors to the North do. See https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB1019426769244153760 https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB1019426769244153760 for a dated explanation.

kragen 9y ago

Hard to tell, but it sounds like they're 3-D printing the building envelope, minus vapor barriers and whatnot. But nowadays the envelope is not the expensive part of a building, although it is the most visible. Plumbing, electrical, HVAC, floor finishing, decor, and so on accounts for most of the building cost. For some reason they aren't mentioned in the story, probably because nobody has a credible automation approach to them yet. If you want to reduce the cost of the building envelope, possibly superadobe, shotcrete on airforms, ferrocrete, and flexible domes are better bets than 3-D printing of concrete. (The geodesic dome was conceived specifically as a solution to this problem, but I'm not convinced it actually does a good job at it.) What's the current solution these things are competing with? Here in Argentina, the standard low-cost construction approach in the villas miserias is masonry with hollow bricks (18×33 cm), which cost 50¢. So a 6m×6m×3m building envelope requires about 1200 bricks, costing US$600 (AR$12000) if you buy them new instead of scavenging, plus some mortar and a corrugated-metal roof, which add a bit to the cost. It takes several days or even, at times, weeks to finish the construction; usually the family who live there build the house themselves, which is less of an opportunity cost than it sounds like with the unemployment rate as high as it is, especially among youth. Some families pour concrete slabs, others use dirt floors. So, roughly speaking, this approach has to come down in cost by 10× to even compete with our current vernacular architecture, let alone improve on its pricing. The concrete-3-D-printing approaches I've seen, like Andrey Rudenko's https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQ5Elbvvr1M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQ5Elbvvr1M, all share the drawback that they require a long time, because you have to wait for the lower layers of the construction to cure a bit before you can add more layers. Their big advantage is not that they're cheaper than pouring concrete into forms — although they may be, especially if you're building a large building or a dense construction — but that they have a lot of freedom of geometry.

kiliantics 9y ago
Not to mention the cost of the land... Short of a radical change in how our society works, the only realistic solution to homelessness is going to have to be some kind of decent social housing. Maybe it will somehow be cheaply 3D-printed but the government is going to have to buy the land first. (That, or stop making it exclusive to the rich.) Access to land was the original problem here (since Enclosure Acts) and it has to be part of the solution.

rubarb 9y ago

A house, any house, needs to be placed on some plot of land. So as for those who lack shelter, do they already have a piece of land and just can’t cheaply build on it, or is it not having land at all that is the problem

nabla9 9y ago

How much homelessness exists in developing world because houses are too expensive to build? $4,000 already builds a nice house in many areas, especially when labor is very cheap. To build a house one must first own or rent the land where to build the house. Investing $4,000 for a house you build illegally is stupid. When city planning and zoning is inadequate and ownership uncertain, slums naturally emerge.

jaclaz 9y ago

At first sight it seems to me like it is the usual "flawed" approach to third world problems by people having only first world experience. Loosely building a house is made of costs coming out of: 1) base materials (and the plants to make them and the logistics to bring them on site) 2) equipment 3) labour In "first world" countries they can be roughly weighted (as percentage of building costs) as: 1) 40%-50% 2) 10%-15% 3) 35%-50% So everyone is trying to make more "industrial" the building using prefabricated components, standardized parts, etc, attempting to reduce the labour on site, it is logical. In not-developed countries, usually pure labour is extremely cheap, while materials (and the logistics) are extremely expensive, besides equipment that (not being available for rent or sub-contracting on the local market) needs to be imported and is only justified on larger projects. It is not unusual that the same percentages in a not-developed country become: 1) 70%-75% 2) 15%-20% 3) 5%-10% Additionally the problem might be finding locally skilled labour capable of managing the high tech equipment.

morganjlopes 9y ago
This is a very thoughtful breakdown and we appreciate the interest. We (New Story) have been building houses in developing countries using traditional methods for over 3 years now. Developing this tool is in direct response to the issues we've encountered on the ground. As we look at the 1 billion+ people without adequate housing, this and innovations like it are designed to increase the speed, efficiency, and quality with which homes can be built for those in need.
ddingus 9y ago
Skill is a significant factor. Tech can mitigate it as can mentoring and enabling at scale. Quality matters. The better the homes are, the better the return on investment and quality of life is, both being necessary goals.
- abakker 9y ago
  I'd say technology can also increase the burden of skill. I.e. an average jigsaw and pencil line requires less skill and is safer than operating a CNC router, until the router gets a ton of failsafes, sensors, etc implemented. the Anti-crash features probably cost more in a CNC than the rest of the machine does (and that is why mine doesn't have any except the minimum). You're right that quality matters. My take on this is designing for poor tolerances to still yield strong structures. This 3D printing approach looks good for some aspects, but the lack of a roof seems disqualifying for me. The roof is the hard part, and potentially the easiest part to do incorrectly/unsafely. I'm surprised they didn't just print in crenelations in the top edge to allow drop-in roof joists. a simple shed roof seems like it could have easily been integrated.

CharlesMerriam2 9y ago

Technology is not always the solution to all problems. 1. You could ameliorate the misery of homelessness by providing a low cost "locker" system where people could store a cubic meter of so of goods while homeless. 2. There are various low cost home plans, shelters made from a single sheet of plywood, hot-bunk and ultra high density housing plans. 3. So far, no one has a sustainable economic model that would encourage an municipality to compete for the existing homeless. Both architecture and civil engineering are the wrong advances to solve this problem.

fruzz 9y ago

They want to get costs down to $4,000. You can already build a home of that size for $4,000. The lack of permanent shelter for the world's poorest isn't a technology problem.

m23khan 9y ago

I applaud the intention behind it but it would be yet another addition to such endeavors. Problem is not the lack of such ideas, the problem is lack of any organized approach to address this problem at a Global Stage. Similar to World coming together to fight against measles and polio, basic human needs such as shelter, etc. need to be met.

theNJR 9y ago

This seems like a better solution for the massive homeless populations in the United States. These could be govt funded and placed on state owned land. I'd love to see it tested out in California. Los Angeles funded the $1.2b proposition HHH. We have around 58,000 homeless. For less than half the allocated funds, you've built a house for all of them. Yes, it's more complicated than that. But it's a start.

jeffreyrogers 9y ago
They need jobs too, so if you're going to house homeless people it probably makes more sense to have dorm style housing somewhere close to jobs they can do, rather than individual homes farther out.

Matth3wMarshall 9y ago

Hi, this is Matthew, one of the cofounders at New Story (YC S15). We're the nonprofit developing this 3D printed home. I'd like to share why we decided to invest in an innovation like this and where we're headed. For context, in 3 years, we've built over 1,000 homes in 11 communities around the world through local partners. The challenge we face is monumental; there are more than a billion people across the globe living without safe shelter. To make a dent in that number, our ability to scale up has to change. Steady, linear improvements will never reach the total addressable market of families in need. We believe R&D and product innovation is essential with a problem of this magnitude. We have to take big swings with forward-thinking technology to achieve a quantum leap in speed, affordability, and quality. Our goal is to help power anyone building homes for the poor — governments and non-profits alike — to do their best work. As we make these strides, it means more families around the world will have safe shelter and can better actualize their potential. We’re looking at a one billion person deficit of a basic human need. We believe maintaining the status quo is irresponsible — it’s terrifying to us — as it’ll never tackle this deficit. Our hypothesis today is that this breakthrough to reach more families can be achieved through robotics and 3D home printing. A year ago, the technology we needed didn’t exist. That’s when we began working with ICON to create a solution to a seemingly unsolvable problem. The exciting result is “the Vulcan,” a 3D Home Printer designed to print a home for less than $4,000 in less than 24 hours. This robotic breakthrough delivers: * Cost decrease (from $6,500/home to ~$4,000 and even lower future cost) * Speed increase (from ~15 days to 12–24hrs to build one home) * Improved quality and customization of the home unit for families More here -> newstorycharity.org/3d-home We'd love to answer any and all questions.

nickthemagicman 9y ago
Your project is great! When will they be ready for consumers? Will they be available in the US?
CodeWriter23 9y ago
I’m curious about how the concrete is reinforced and how using reinforcing materials interacts with the printing process.
9y ago

thedonkeycometh 9y ago

Looks like they're chasing charity money to build a unsustainable first world product using non-local technology and materials. See also: Haiti

JackFr 9y ago

This is ludicrous. It's the solution one comes up with if they haven't given a minute to ask why 1B people don't have adequate shelter. I don't think this will move the needle a bit.

rdiddly 9y ago

Well god bless good intentions, and it's a cool idea, but it seems better-suited to the first world than the third. None of the naysayers have yet mentioned the fact that concrete (especially its ingredient Portland cement) is one of the most energy- and greenhouse-gas-intensive building materials available. (It's made by baking certain minerals in an oven at high temperature.) We who live in large, energy-intensive houses would actually do better for the environment, and for global housing inequity, by living outdoors and in improvised huts of natural materials, rather than trying to get the people who are doing it right to come "up" to an Austin, TX standard of living. But nobody wants to hear that kind of idea. Therefore, we wait until nature imposes that solution on us.

mrfusion 9y ago

Offshoot question. Why can’t we do this with plastic. Plastic sheds hold up great. And plastic lasts for 1000s of years.

leggomylibro 9y ago
Well, one concern may be that plastic lasts for 1000s of years. What do you do when you decide to renovate a village of ten thousand plastic silos or boxes? Transporting and recycling that volume of material would probably be expensive, even if it were a type of plastic that was largely recoverable without losing much of its material properties.

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jimnotgym 9y ago

I used to be in the home-building industry... With a team of three carpenters a hand-saw and hammers I could build a house like the one in the picture in 48 hours out of a sustainable material - softwood. With a nailgun I could go quicker still. I could use a 4x2 studding wall, plywood, breather membrane, counter-batten, clad with larch featheredge. Once up a vapour barrier could stapled inside and recycled paper insulation blown in. Inside that I could line out with fire resistant plasterboard (drywall to my transatlantic cousins) (backed with urethane if extra insulation is needed). This design is easily prefabricated if desired. To contrast with the concrete one this would a) use sustainable materials b) meet the building code of a developed nation. If you are dead set on a concrete wall then just build a set of plywood forms (shuttering as it was called in my day) and cast it in place. A day to put the forms up and pour. The forms are reusable too once set. Now you have a bunker to insulate, waterproof and line out. In the UK you would need to build some kind of studding inside your pill-box for insulation and damp control, much like the 'barn-conversions' the UK is full of. This makes the concrete bit semi-redundant. Sorry but I think this is a poor application of 3d printing. All we need now is a start-up to build a house with a cloud-based block-chain to get the VC's really excited. If you want to look at some really quick constructions there are the brilliant post war 'pre-fabs' of the UK, designed to replace housing lost to bombing. Some could be assembled on-site in 4 hours! There are many still in use today. If it wasn't for the amount of asbestos used there may have been many more still remaining. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prefabs_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prefabs_in_the_United_Kingdom

Animats 9y ago

It's just poured concrete. Building house shells from poured concrete is done worldwide. Edison started that; his system for low-cost housing used standard forms that locked together. Then you pour in concrete, wait, remove the forms, and you have a house. He even built in concrete furniture, which wasn't popular. Much of the world lives in poured-concrete apartment blocks. It's just so cheap. The main problem is crap concrete mixes. If you want to improve concrete construction, come up with a hand-held device where you stick a probe into the mix and it tells you if it's OK. This has been tried a few times.[1][2] Just pouring on concrete like that doesn't compact it properly. Compare the Lil Bubba curb making machine, a simple machine which makes concrete curbs.[3] It's a slip-form machine; the form gives the concrete a smooth edge and top, and as someone shovels in more concrete, it compacts it and pushes itself along. The 3D concrete printing people need to develop something as good as the Lil Bubba. Then they can make flat, solid walls in place. Some of the competing machines have some slip-form guides, so they get a flat surface. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQ_WqvjJtDw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQ_WqvjJtDw [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8z-iebHRxJk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8z-iebHRxJk [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJZMpu4MKn8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJZMpu4MKn8

baybal2 9y ago
>It's just poured concrete. Building house shells from poured concrete is done worldwide. Edison started that; his system for low-cost housing used standard forms that locked together. Then you pour in concrete, wait, remove the forms, and you have a house. He even built in concrete furniture, which wasn't popular. Totally true. And these days it is possible to go even further than that. Concrete construction can be made even cheaper if the cost is a genuine impediment. If material cost is the issue, you can use large aggregate filler, foaming agents, flyash based cements. If it is the time that is at premium, than you can go for SIPs or stay in place formworks. If workforce is the limiting factor, go for larger concrete pours with concrete flowability enhancers.

hoosieree 9y ago

Replace "concrete" with "lunar soil" and we're talking.[1] [1]: https://www.space.com/19602-moon-colony-3d-printing-lunar-dirt.html https://www.space.com/19602-moon-colony-3d-printing-lunar-di...

Nomentatus 9y ago

There's a reason concrete isn't generally used for housing : it retains heat very well in the summer, and transmits cold in the winter just as well. A double shell or foamy concrete could solve this, however.

wheresmyusern 9y ago

this is a waste of time. besides all the great points made elsewhere, about the availability of land, there is the fact that this technique does not provide a good house. concrete houses are usually re-enforced with steel. where is the re-enforcement? concrete is supposed to have "aggregate." without it, you basically have a pile of hardened mortar that expands and contracts way too much when exposed to water.