Virginia Family Gets Keys To Habitat For Humanity's First 3D-Printed Home in the US (cnn.com) 33
One Virginia family received the keys to their new 3D-printed home in time for Christmas. The home is Habitat for Humanity's first 3D-printed home in the nation, according to a Habitat news release. CNN reports: Janet V. Green, CEO of Habitat for Humanity Peninsula and Greater Williamsburg, told CNN it partnered with Alquist, a 3D printing company, earlier this year to begin the process. Alquist's crew printed the house. Janet V. Green, CEO of Habitat for Humanity Peninsula and Greater Williamsburg, told CNN it partnered with Alquist, a 3D printing company, earlier this year to begin the process. Alquist's crew printed the house. The technology allowed the home to be built in just 12 hours, which saves about four weeks of construction time for a typical home. The concrete used in the house's 3D construction has many long-term benefits, such as the ability to retain temperature and withstand natural disasters, like tornadoes and hurricanes.
April Stringfield purchased the home through the Habitat Homebuyer Program. She will move in with her 13-year-old son just in time for the holidays. "My son and I are so thankful," Stringfield said in a live feed streamed on Habitat's Facebook page. "I always wanted to be a homeowner. It's like a dream come true." Stringfield's home also includes a personal 3D printer that will allow her to reprint anything she may need, "everything from electrical outlet to trim to cabinet knobs," Green told CNN.
April Stringfield purchased the home through the Habitat Homebuyer Program. She will move in with her 13-year-old son just in time for the holidays. "My son and I are so thankful," Stringfield said in a live feed streamed on Habitat's Facebook page. "I always wanted to be a homeowner. It's like a dream come true." Stringfield's home also includes a personal 3D printer that will allow her to reprint anything she may need, "everything from electrical outlet to trim to cabinet knobs," Green told CNN.
Dupe (Score:3)
It seems like only yesterday... Oh, It was: https://hardware.slashdot.org/... [slashdot.org]
Re: Dupe (Score:3)
Dope (Score:2)
I was about to question that logic until I noticed the double membership number. (sigh) Another troll account to watch for until negative karma renders it useless.
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It seems like only yesterday... Oh, It was: https://hardware.slashdot.org/... [slashdot.org]
But this time with blockchain!
Maybe /. is Covering the Story in Stages (Score:2)
Yesterday's news, tomorrow? (Score:1)
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What are you complaining about?! It's news for nerds (who were hiding under a rock). Stuff that matters (even after being posted to Slashdot a few times). Just as advertised.
Two different Habitat houses in VA? (Score:2)
And both are claiming to be the first 3-D printed house? That has to be the explanation.
This is gonna get messy...
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This is gonna get messy...
Considering the mess a desktop-sized 3D printer makes when things go wrong, imagine a house-sized one that prints in concrete. I’d hate to be the one who has to clean up after that.
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Deserved punishment for user error? Anyway, it should be rare that there's an F up. The at-fault party will have to pay to demolish and restart. If it's a rare enough thing, insurance (or a small markup) ought to cover the cost. I mean, car insurance works because most cars don't get in an accident. As long as the printer works well in 95% of cases and has enough checks during operation to ensure that it won't have a failure mode such that the structure is dangerous, it ought to be fine.
Automated home prin
Provided 3D printer seems like gimmick (Score:2)
That doesn't make much sense.
First, it's one more thing to keep around in a fairly small house.
Second, nothing in the house should be obscure as HfH uses standard "contractor grade" materials in most cases -- the materials and time to print a new switch plate is far greater than just going to the nearest Home Depot and buying one for under $2 (as low as 68 cents).
Third, by the time most "replacements"
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>contractor grade
Ahh yes. Contractor grade materials. Buy a house made with contractor grade plugs, wall plates, boob lights, non GCFI non ACFI breakers and 14 gauge wire for shared 15A circuits. Then spend the next 30 years replacing it all.
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14 gauge wire is the correct gauge for a 15 amp circuit. Also electrical code requires AGFI breakers now everywhere. You might want to educate yourself before you start spouting off like a dumbfuck [nfpa.org].
14 gauge is sufficient for a singe 15A load. Guess how many actual loads can be put on one gauge 14 wire in the frankly dumb way US household electrics works. I would expect a competent electrician to take into account actual use and compensate for it. Every US house I've owned, supposedly with electrics installed 'to code' by electricians and properly inspected has had a litany of non-code and generally dangerous hacks in the electrics.
The house I just purchased didn't have the ground wired on any of the s
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14 gauge is sufficient for a singe 15A load. Guess how many actual loads can be put on one gauge 14 wire
15 amps can go on a 15 amp circuit. Anymore, and the 15 amp breaker trips.
I would expect a competent electrician to take into account actual use and compensate for it.
Guess what dumbfuck, they do. That’s why houses have multiple 15 amp circuits. But you’d be hard pressed to find anything that draws 15 amps.
Every US house I've owned, supposedly with electrics installed 'to code' by electricians and properly inspected has had a litany of non-code and generally dangerous hacks in the electrics.
Says the dumb fuck that doesn’t even know the electrical code.
The house I just purchased didn't have the ground wired on any of the sockets. I guess the inspectors just happened to overlook that.
That’s called an old house that was built under a previous electrical code. Electrical codes get updated dumbfuck but nowhere requires you to rip out old work every time the code is updated.
But I'm only an EE. So what do I know?
Yeah you’re a c
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>contractor grade
Ahh yes. Contractor grade materials. Buy a house made with contractor grade plugs, wall plates, boob lights, non GCFI non ACFI breakers and 14 gauge wire for shared 15A circuits. Then spend the next 30 years replacing it all.
Umm.... What are boob lights?
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This is a boob light:
https://youtu.be/a929IRtg4YU [youtu.be] (Naomi Wu)
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They're everywhere.
https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
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>contractor grade
Ahh yes. Contractor grade materials. Buy a house made with contractor grade plugs, wall plates, boob lights, non GCFI non ACFI breakers and 14 gauge wire for shared 15A circuits. Then spend the next 30 years replacing it all.
Umm.... What are boob lights?
Common in the US. The cheapest form of light fixture, particularly ugly and installed by contractors in houses they build because they are cheap. They are a pox on US home lighting.
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Ah! Got it. Yeah, the contractor put some in my home when it was built. I've never heard them called boob lights, but I admit I noticed the similarity when I saw them. I immediately replaced it with a better-looking fixture.
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This just looks like a "3D printing" PR/sales/marketing gimmick.
You're talking about the house too, right?
I can't imagine this being in any way better than just using some prefabricated concrete structures like the soviets did with Khrushovkas [youtu.be]. Most of the work will be installing shit like plumbing and wiring anyway.
12 Hours and how many weeks? (Score:5, Informative)
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Come on, we can't allow a one-day construction gap! https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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That's missing the point. 3D printing buildings gives greater freedom to use arbitrary shapes. Architecture that would have been expensive and required skilled labour to produce can now be 3D printed easily.
It's potentially more efficient too, since less of the building has to be prefabricated elsewhere and transported to site.
Aurora Tech just reviewed a relatively cheap clay printer for home use. It's an interesting device. Much less resolution than a plastic printer, but also much faster. Failed prints do
re: advantages of 3D printing (Score:2)
Yeah.... good point, about it allowing more freedom to use arbitrary shapes in construction.
But in a very general sense? I keep holding off on buying myself a 3D printer because I feel like the technology is still in its infancy. Sure, we reached the point where anyone can afford a basic 3D printer that uses spools of plastic wire or resin. But they get considerably more costly as you want to be able to make larger-sized objects, and things like the clay printer you mention show how even the "ink" used is i
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You can just send your design files off to a company that will 3D print them for you. They have experienced operators, high end printers, finishing tools like polishers etc.
In fact the same companies that will make your PCB are now offering to 3D print an enclosure for you too. They can even assemble the whole thing in small quantities.
Owning a 3D printer is okay if you like to tinker, but otherwise I treat them the same as most 2D printers. I have a colour laser around because sometimes I don't want to wai
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And the land will normally be 50% of the cost.
Indeed, a quirk of having a financialized housing market, is that prices are largely set by credit availability. If you can reduce the actual build cost, then you just increase the amount of 'value' attributable to the land. This is why houses are getting smaller and are generally only built to the minimum govt requirements, even though prices are going up like crazy - the build costs is an annoying inconvenience when the goal of your housing market is to generate speculative financial assets (rather than s
I can too (Score:2)
Structure building time is not the bottleneck (Score:1)
We've already got pre-fabs. They may not be built in 12 hours, but they're build quite fast and in a controlled environment. Then they're shipped in units on trucks so you know that at least they can withstand hours of moderate earthquake shaking without falling apart.
Most of the time and expense is in the approval, land acquisition, permitting, hook-up fees, and site prep.
A 12-hour build time impresses me about as much as 1-hour eye glasses. You know what? I'm going to be looking through these glasses
Is 3d printers are realiable (Score:1)