A 3D-Printed House?

Is this a viable option for today or is it still in the future?

Gordon and I are now looking for a sustainable lifestyle for our retirement. I am a full-time kitchen designer for Lowe’s, former Disney animator for 14 years, and multiple-media artist and miniaturist. Gordon works in hospitality at a Wolfeboro resort, and is a long time musician, songwriter, and writer with a passion for movie making and photography, and this family's self appointed computer guru. Between us we have built two and a half homes, acting in most cases as our own GC. The first was a panel kit house in Southern California.

At 57+ and 60+, with a 17-year-old and 15-year-old still at home, we are looking now to change our lifestyle radically in the next three years. We hope that a cost-effective 3D-printed house might be part of that change to a smaller life with more time for creative pursuits.

This chat is about that search.Join us in a fact-gathering mission to learn if in three years we—and maybe you as well—can legally move into a 3D-printed home here in New Hampshire.

We want to know how close the reality of a 3D-printed house, as our retirement home, actually is.

We will be researching cost, permits, sustainability and the pros and cons of a 500 to 700 square-foot home either completely or partially 3D printed. We will be looking for designs and companies already out there, and the flexibility of creating your own unique 3D-printed home.

Along the way we will share everything we learn so that you too can decide if this is a viable option for you.

We are looking for any and all constructive feedback, so please let us hear from you. Follow the links in this chat to draw your own conclusions. Do you have questions you want answered? Send us your questions addressed to Karen or Gordon as we find our niches inside the world of 3D.

Let's Get Started!

I will be starting with a Pinterest board to find the first round of most visible information.

I also found a lot of information at 3DPI, an aggregator site for 3D printing, putting itself forward as a reliable media resource for all things 3D.This guide provides an overview of 3D printing.

3DPI has a free beginner's guide. The glossary of words specific to 3D printing will be very handy. The guide includes a timeline on the development of 3D tech that starts with Dr. Kodama of Japan in May of 1980. Originally called RP, or Rapid Prototyping, technologies, the tech that enables the construction of a finished home is a much newer process.

In its most basic application 3D printing is an additive process that, in the case of a home, uses a specialized robot onsite or in a factory to build, in thin layers, a predetermined floor plan with room for insulation, rebar, and services within its honeycomb-like structure.

Under 3DPI applications for this technology, Loughborough University, Contour Crafting, and Universe Architecture are listed as most notable. More on them soon.

I Have Questions

The idea of a 3D-printed house is very exciting. But I have to admit that, when I start to think about it, I have some questions. My first question is, of course, "Where can I go see one for myself?" I am very interested, and I don't want to make it sound as if I'm trying to quash the idea before it even gets started. But I believe that if we find the right people to whom we can pose these kinds of questions, we can help speed up the transition of 3D printed house from a promising technology to a viable way for a very large number of people to have affordable, comfortable, durable housing.

So let's start with something that is obvious. I assume these homes are not to code, not because they are unsafe, but because the code has not caught up. In what ways are these houses not to code? Is there a possible hybrid of 3D-printed and conventional construction that could come under the current code for poured-concrete construction? Are the walls not "poured concrete," even if the pouring was done a little at a time and without forms?

On the other hand, this isn't exactly like poured concrete. When I pour concrete pillars or walls, there is a lot of aggregate in the mix. The concrete used in the printers seems to have little or no rock. How does this affect the durability of the concrete? And are the floors of these houses poured conventionally, or are they also printed?

Now I move on from the shell of the house to everything else that goes into make a shell into a home. The site, for example. Is the site preparation any different for a 3D-printed home than for a conventional home? Are there kinds of lots that are better suited, or not at all suited to this technology (at least at present)?

How are mechanical elements, plumbing, heating, electrical, low-voltage wiring, installed in a 3D printed home? How do you hang fixtures, cabinets, mirrors? How, for that matter, do you hang pictures?

What kinds of windows and doors, interior and exterior, will work in this kind of structure, and how are they installed? How do you hang window treatments?

These are the questions I would need to answer before I could consider having a 3D-printed home built and moving into one. I'm hoping to find many qualified people to ask this summer as I start to explore this fascinating new concept.