6 ms·

For my new house, laying the bricks (aerated concrete blocks actually) took 2 days. The rest of the house took more than one year to finish. Not really necessar

For my new house, laying the bricks (aerated concrete blocks actually) took 2 days. The rest of the house took more than one year to finish. Not really necessary to optimize this step in many cases.

jillesvangurp 5y ago
Yep, that's the real issue. It optimizes one of the less expensive steps in the construction process; therefore the savings are not significant enough to matter much.
Gibbon1 5y ago
I think about that every time I see yet another article on 3d printing houses. My parents added a bedroom to a stick framed house. The floor joists took a weekend. Nailing together and erecting walls took one weekend. Framing the roof, another weekend. That was my dad, mom, brother and I. And we used a skill saw, hammers and nails. I think the issue is each task of itself is fairly optimized. Yet there are a large number of them to do. And a problem is automation generally requires tight tight tolerances or you're back to hand fitting everything. For instance with molding a skilled tradesman will just install it without any detailed plans. Working around any small variation won't slow him down at all. Another issue I see is lot of focus on single family. Gut feeling is mass produced single family is a dying industry in the west.
- cudgy 5y ago
  Why? Isn’t most of the West one of the the least densely populated areas in the United States? Seems there would be lots of land to build single family homes.
  - quietbritishjim 5y ago
    Wow that is an incredibly US-centric view even by HN standards. They meant the western world, not the West in the USA. Try Googling "the west" and look at the top results.
    - cudgy 5y ago
      I don’t base my definitions on the most popular search results. Referring to the west as you reference makes little sense in the context of what I was addressing. HN is not only largely US focused, but I would say it is hyper-focused from the Silicon Valley FAANG perspective. Basically, a few companies in a single metro area.
  - Gibbon1 5y ago
    I meant the US and Europe. And by extension places of that nature. Slower growing aging populations and the realization that low density single family both burdens local government with costly infrastructure that generates low revenue. Like a sewer main with 100 customers per mile. Only sustainable when growing fast. There is a lot of multifamily being built despite fairly intense NIMBYism. And despite that you're seeing cities getting rid of R1 zoning.
    - yholio 5y ago
      There is no fundamental reason for urban sprawl to stop. Western living standards and wealth are increasing, and the actual material costs of laying a sewer pipe or road become negligible. With the advent of electric self driving cars, transportation becomes cheap and hassle free. A network of highways converging to an urban center served by Boring co Loop tunnels can gather trafic from a 30 mile area. As long as travel times are less than say, around 45 minutes, those people will be living "in the city". A 30 mile radius means about 7 million plots of 10000 sq feet, so you could accommodate more than 20 million inhabitants in this suburbopolis of single detached family homes. The factors preventing it are land prices, regulatory pressure and homebuyer tastes.
SlapperKoala 5y ago
In most major cities the real cost is the land and paperwork to be able to build there. The actual physical materials the building is made of are mostly aesthetic

For my new house, laying the bricks (aerated concrete blocks actually) took 2 days. The rest of the house took more than one year to finish. Not really necessary to optimize this step in many cases.

jillesvangurp 5y ago

Yep, that's the real issue. It optimizes one of the less expensive steps in the construction process; therefore the savings are not significant enough to matter much.

Gibbon1 5y ago

I think about that every time I see yet another article on 3d printing houses. My parents added a bedroom to a stick framed house. The floor joists took a weekend. Nailing together and erecting walls took one weekend. Framing the roof, another weekend. That was my dad, mom, brother and I. And we used a skill saw, hammers and nails. I think the issue is each task of itself is fairly optimized. Yet there are a large number of them to do. And a problem is automation generally requires tight tight tolerances or you're back to hand fitting everything. For instance with molding a skilled tradesman will just install it without any detailed plans. Working around any small variation won't slow him down at all. Another issue I see is lot of focus on single family. Gut feeling is mass produced single family is a dying industry in the west.

cudgy 5y ago
Why? Isn’t most of the West one of the the least densely populated areas in the United States? Seems there would be lots of land to build single family homes.
- quietbritishjim 5y ago
  Wow that is an incredibly US-centric view even by HN standards. They meant the western world, not the West in the USA. Try Googling "the west" and look at the top results.
  - cudgy 5y ago
    I don’t base my definitions on the most popular search results. Referring to the west as you reference makes little sense in the context of what I was addressing. HN is not only largely US focused, but I would say it is hyper-focused from the Silicon Valley FAANG perspective. Basically, a few companies in a single metro area.
- Gibbon1 5y ago
  I meant the US and Europe. And by extension places of that nature. Slower growing aging populations and the realization that low density single family both burdens local government with costly infrastructure that generates low revenue. Like a sewer main with 100 customers per mile. Only sustainable when growing fast. There is a lot of multifamily being built despite fairly intense NIMBYism. And despite that you're seeing cities getting rid of R1 zoning.
  - yholio 5y ago
    There is no fundamental reason for urban sprawl to stop. Western living standards and wealth are increasing, and the actual material costs of laying a sewer pipe or road become negligible. With the advent of electric self driving cars, transportation becomes cheap and hassle free. A network of highways converging to an urban center served by Boring co Loop tunnels can gather trafic from a 30 mile area. As long as travel times are less than say, around 45 minutes, those people will be living "in the city". A 30 mile radius means about 7 million plots of 10000 sq feet, so you could accommodate more than 20 million inhabitants in this suburbopolis of single detached family homes. The factors preventing it are land prices, regulatory pressure and homebuyer tastes.

SlapperKoala 5y ago

In most major cities the real cost is the land and paperwork to be able to build there. The actual physical materials the building is made of are mostly aesthetic