A community near Austin with 100 homes are taking shape all at the same time, but what makes it more amazing is that it’s a 3D-printed neighborhood. It is set to start next year and moreover, it will cost around 30% less than what around the same sized houses will cost too.
Each house will have between 2 to 4 bedrooms, as well as much higher codes, and they will also have solar paneled roofs.
One of the builders is a company named Lennar, which is one of the country’s biggest home builders. They partnered with a 3D-printing firm, ICON, to create the neighborhood which they are calling The Genesis Collection. In fact, Lennar already an investor in ICON early on, and saw that the company had major potential to substantially lower construction costs in the near future.
ICON uses 3D-printing machines which are fully-automated, each of which only requires the attention of three workmen. Moreover, the printing can go on for 24-hours a day, everyday. According to the firm, they can even print the entire wall system with electrical, plumbing and ventilation in just a third of what the typical construction teams would require to build a conventional house. Because of this, it also lowers the cost and lessens the timeframe it takes to complete one of the homes.
Executive chairman of Lennar, Stuart Miller, told NBC, “This is the first 100 homes, but we expect to be able to bring this to scale, and at scale we really bring cycle times down and we also bring cost down.”
The way it works is a floor plan for the home is loaded into the Build OS on a computer first. After, layer upon layer of cement is actually squeezed out like toothpaste in order to make the walls. There are holes left though for the placement of the needed utilities.
According to the NBC staff who reported on the builds, they explained it as the first mixture of cement looking like taffy whose texture was like that of “cement corduroy.”
In addition, these homes are more energy efficient than wood since they are far more sturdy than normal homes. They are also around ‘4 times above the regulatory code for resistance to various elements like wind and water.’
Next year, the company shares that it should be ready for reservations as the very first entirely 3D-printed community. Moreover, the fact that they don’t cost as much as usual homes also means that should mortgage rates rise with inflation and housing prices, the company Lennar hopes to keep the houses priced at $400,000 if possible.
To see more about the project, watch the video below.
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