3D Printed Houses May Cost A Fraction Of The Cost Of Regular Houses Pirce
Advances in 3D printing technology allow us to start making many things cheaper and quicker. And now Estonian scientists may have come with a way to use 3D printing to build houses.
Face of a 3D printer while working on a figure.
By Mustafa Al-Elq [CC BY 4.0] (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)], from Wikimedia Commons
The discovery comes from the Estonian University of Tartu and the Estonian University of Life Sciences and it promises 3D printable concrete materials made from a mixture of peat, oil shale ash and nanoparticles of silicone. The three main advantages of houses built with this technology are low energy cost, low monetary cost, and usage of local materials. Especially the low monetary cost looks quite interesting as the technology promises to lower the price of houses to about a tenth of current costs.
Peat has interesting antibacterial and thermal properties and is easily available in many places around the world but isn’t much used because it slows down the speed of concrete hardening. This is because humates in the peat react with other chemicals preventing a creation of a mechanically durable material. But the scientists managed to overcome this problem and created a durable composite based on peat with very good thermal and mechanical properties.
At the moment the scientists are looking for funds so they will be able to showcase a fully 3D printed house made from this material as at the moment they only had the funds to 3D print smaller segments of walls as a proof of concept. But once the project gets funded the scientists estimate they could 3D print houses of an area of up to 490 square feet (45m2) for about 5 850 US dollars.
Sources:
- https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/estonia-3d-printed-house-material/
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214993718300927?via%3Dihub
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That’s astonishing. Especially the price point. I’m a little skeptical these structures will be able to withstand much like an earthquake or other natural disaster but hey it’s worth a try and at the price it won’t cost nearly as much to rebuild your house.