4 ms·
My house is also built from concrete blocks, because they have quite good parameters when combined with good thermal insulation. Concrete walls were something l
by miskin 7y ago
My house is also built from concrete blocks, because they have quite good parameters when combined with good thermal insulation. Concrete walls were something like 3% of price of the house and they were done in a week, that is again something like 5% of (my) house construction time.
Concrete blocks can be produced locally with rather simple tools. It also has benefit that it may provide work to local people.
In poor regions, labor is cheap and creating workplaces is always benefit to local commnunity, so I wonder if automating this out is positive thing at all.
I'd like to see comparison of costs/benefits for houses built like this vs more traditional construction. Don't get me wrong, I love tech toys, but this looks very much as a solution looking for a problem.
- iguy 7y agoYes exactly. This seems to be replacing the part that was never a problem (building walls) with something high-tech and surely expensive. The nozzle that deposits that concrete is just guaranteed to be much more fussy about quality control than the guys shoving it into moulds to make blocks. So it'll need high-quality materials transported from somewhere, not whatever is lying around.
- chaostheory 7y agoI don’t feel that this machine is ultimately meant for poorer regions with cheap labor. This is just mainly R&D.
- miskin 7y agoI agree, this would make much more sense in areas with high labor costs, something like sea side resorts where you can produce many similar buildings with high building density.