re: Crazy construction materials news I learned today

Realistically...probably more cement-based construction.

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Plastic houses.....the future.

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I realize that’s a joke - but it’s probably going to happen, isn’t it?

Modern houses will get even cheaper, build quality will get worse, they’ll be even more disposable - more soulless.

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Plastic houses.....the future.

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3D printed concrete houses! It could be transformative technology.

I have a friend who basically has a concrete house. The roof and exterior are aesthetic only so you can't see that the structure is essentially concrete. It is hurricane proof. If a storm comes, once the storm shutters are closed, it literally can only blow the veneer off his house. It's flood-resistant (though definitely not flood proof) because there are no real joints for water to come in at. If the doorways are sealed up, water can seep through the walls slowly, but that takes a while. The walls of his house basically act as sandbags themselves, so his interior stays nice and dry. Short floods likely won't harm his house. The sound-proofing qualities are unreal. His home theater is a no-joke professionally installed sort of setup with gobs of amplifier power. You cannot really hear it from outside the room. His power bills are nearly zero because the insulative properties are way better than your typical finish-over-stud construction. With the whole house generator he has, he's got a nice little fort for his wife and himself.

There are all kinds of advantages. The giant downside is that his house was significantly more expensive to build than a comparably sized stud based house because of the relatively specialized labor required to build it. A robot like this one, though, would bring that WAY down and a customized floor plan is as simple as feeding it a drawing file with exactly what you want.