by Jamieson D.
Recently I have been interested in the 3D printing and all of the different, odd or helpful objects it can create. But the more I thought about the subject, the more I began to wonder if 3D printing is essential for companies or a bulk manufacturing company.
I then looked online to see if there was such a thing, and to my surprise there were many. Many companies really do specialize in the world of 3D printing, and the one that stood out to me was how some actually built houses through 3D printing.
So as I did my research, I had thought more, and more about if this concept of building houses is better than a regular process of creating a home.
I then sorted my facts into three basic categories: Cost, looks, and speed. These categories should cover all the necessary requirements decide if a building is worth it or not. So to compare one another, I will explain the average cost and speed of construction being made.
An ordinary house being built from scratch, in California, costs around a total of $202,362, and this is just for the house itself.
A lot of the house is around $2,610,000 for a 2,000 square foot area, and about $1,305 per square foot. But the average home in California is approximately 1470 sq ft ($1,918,785)
These costs can be considered a lot with an average California income of $73,197 monthly or $878,364 per year plus a 30-year plan (~$63,959 per year for the mortgage)
Now that you have an idea of an average house in mind let’s talk about what the cost is for a 3D printed home is. Multiple different companies create these houses, and with these companies, various machines create them, but the one I will focus on is Apis corporation.
Apis is a start-up company that is the first to create a moveable 3D printer that can build buildings on sight and they have hopes to be used in NASA’s phase III of Mars, printing houses on Mars.
They advertise their houses for around $10,000 for a 400 sq ft house so that would mean it would cost approximately $36,750 for a 1470 sq ft home, so for a 30-year plan, it would cost around $1225 per year. This cost is 1,882,035 difference for the same house size, but keep in mind that where the house is located will also differ the pricing.
Now that we have gotten a grasp on the pricing difference, we should look into the next factor of looks. A 3D printed house can be made with many different materials: concrete, wax, foam, polymers, metals, plastics, and resins. A regular home can be built out of anything which is better, but not by much the only significant difference is how it can’t print fabrics and insulation.
Other than this difference 3D printed houses, and regular homes are mostly on an equal field when it comes to building supplies, but that doesn’t mean what is created is equal. At the moment 3D printers struggle when pieces of a print are curvy and have “overhangs.” Thus making regular houses have much more variety in looks.
So what are overhangs? Overhangs are pieces of a structure that are not connected to floor or base, for example, balconies.
As a final stage of measurement, we will look at how fast each house is built. There are several stages of building, but we will only look at the final stage/completion of the house.
An average house can be created in around six months; this does not include the paperwork. For a 3D printed home it can take as little as a day to a week considering the size of the house, and again, this does not include the paperwork.
There are some sections I did not cover, such as eco-friendliness, or the increase or decrease of job opportunity. Even though these branches are not included, I hope you got more of the gist on 3D printed houses and hopefully changed your mind to think about what could happen in the future.
https://thelendersnetwork.com/how-much-does-it-cost-to-build-a-house/
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