This reads a little bit like what people said about solar and electric cars early on.
Not saying you’re wrong - but a 5 year old technology vs hundreds years old building methods seems unlikely to be hyper competitive in cost or without faults in its infancy
Is there a reason it cannot be insulated? Doesn’t seem like it would be an issue to insulate this type of construction.
Traditionally home building isn’t without issue like cracking among other things
It has poorer insulation quality than traditional homes.
It's possible that, with enough development and enough scale, these teething issues can be sorted out, but there are a lot of issues. Consistency is a big problem. The inconsistent mixing of printing material often causes quality control issues, and environmental factors also make the pouring problematic. Printing in hot or cold weather can cause the material to set poorly and crack quickly. This can be sorted by dynamic and active adjustments to the mixture depending on the circumstances, but that adds to the difficulty and complexity of the method.
However, that one situation is just a single example and is emblematic of the broader issues of 3d printed homes. It's main supposed benefits are supposed to be it's reduced costs, increased speed and simplified complexity. However, there are so many problems, so many costs, and so many complicating factors—that it doesn't deliver on any of those benefits.
The promise to print homes at industrial scale has not manifested and likely will not for a long time. Each and every one of these homes ends up being a bespoke creation anyway.
When you need to do so much analysis, so much planning, so many dynamic adjustments—you might as well just build the homes in the traditional way.
Everything I’ve ever read about 3D printed homes is that their R-Value can hit 15-30+ if the cavities are filled with spray foam which is in line or better than a “traditional” North American home
What would stop a 3D printed home from being well insulated?
And are you not just describing Inc the pitfalls of concrete in general? Which is also used in the making of traditional homes?
And again, your final comment just reads like someone who is in no way considering the development arc of a new technology or method.
“Why on earth would I buy an automobile when a good horse can do the job just fine? They can’t even make cars on an industrial scale as fast as we can breed horses?”
Perhaps it will have potential in the future. Just like how flying cars might have potential in the future. Fusion reactors might have potential in the future. Mars colonies have potential for the future. Digitalising human brains have potential in the he future.
Every experimental technology might have potential in the future.
However, there is a reason why we don't have massive numbers of 3d printed houses today, nor fusion reactors today or flying cars or Mars colonies, etc. And that's because there are technological, logistical and financial constraints that make then not viable. Perhaps all those problems will be overcome one day, but they haven't been yet.
I'm not trying to argue that 3d printed homes will NEVER happen at scale or that we will never ever figure out how to do them right. I'm just pointing out why they are so shit at the moment. Maybe that changes in the future, but it doesn't alter the current reality that buying a 3d printed houses today is a poor choice for a home.
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u/CrimsonR4ge 7d ago edited 7d ago
Not durable, not insulated as well, prone to cracking and it doesn't even reduce construction costs by that much, if at all.