Can you build a new house with a 3D printer?
It’s cheap. It’s built fast. It’s deemed safe. A house in Russia was printed in less than 24 hours at the cost of a little over $10,000, while one in China is said to be able to withstand an earthquake with an 8.0 magnitude on the Richter scale. Will 3D-printed buildings be the smartest way to make new homes more affordable in pricey Australia?
Introducing the 3D-Printed Home
The revolutionary 400-square-foot house in Russia was made by Apis Cor, a company that can build an entire home through 3D printing within a single day. The founder, Nikita Chen-yun-tai, has a mission and vision “to automate everything,” including building a house. Seeing that all construction 3D printers made before his invention were the bulky, portal types that require costly transportation and off-site production, he came up with a printer of his own: a construction crane design that can complete the process onsite. Within less than a day, the company finished printing partitions, self-bearing walls, and the building envelope. The roof, interior fixtures, fittings, and paint were then added. The house has a bathroom, kitchen, living room, and a hallway, and Apis Cor claims that it can last up to 175 years.
Meanwhile, in China, HuaShang Tengda printed a 4,305-square-foot two-storey villa, which they say is durable enough to tolerate an 8.0 earthquake. Unlike the Apis Cor method, the Beijing-based company printed the entire house at once (for the first time in history), instead of printing the mansion piece by piece.
Another Chinese company, ZhuoDa, managed to print their own fireproof, earthquake-resistant two-story villa off-site in less than three hours. The parts were later shipped to the location and were then assembled.
Can You Build a New House With a 3D Printer?
These groundbreaking technological developments in the construction industry can greatly improve your prospects in building a new home that can fit your budget and save you lots of time. Depending on the quality, type, durability, and reliability of the materials used in the process, a 3D-printed home can be safe from fire, earthquakes, and other natural calamities.
At the moment, however, 3D printed homes are still considered a novelty. According to Dr. Hank Haeusler, a senior architecture lecturer of the University of NSW, it is certainly possible that Australia will be seeing more of 3D printed housing construction and nodes in five to ten years. At the RMIT University in Melbourne, researchers have devised a 3D-printed structural node that can connect parts of a building together, such as flat concrete walls. While it is still in the experimental stage and extensive testing is necessary to get it certified, homeseekers down under can expect more improvements and developments to the existing technology to make house building more efficient, affordable, and quick.
Experts are still perfecting the technique, as 3D printing can only build the basic shell of your property, and there’s so much more than that when building a new house. While the race is on to find new construction methods including those who have 3D printers, iBuildNew is here to help you design a new home and choose a suitable builder so you can achieve your dream house soon. If you are interested in building a new home, make sure that you contact iBuildNew to compare all of you options and find a builder, land estate or house & land package that is right for you. Call us on 1800 184 284 or book a call .
Let us do the legwork for you.
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Zoe Langenberg
Zoe is passionate about coffee and interior design. You can find her most weekends exploring an art gallery or devouring a good book.
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