There are more than 58,000 houses currently under construction in the DFW area – more than in any other US metropolitan area – but one of them is “breaking new ground.” A house under construction northeast of Dallas will be the first in North Texas built by a giant 3D printer.
The house will be a 1,700 square foot, three-bedroom, two-bathroom single-family home located east of Lake Lavon in the Collin County town of Nevada.
Sebin Joseph and Trayvon Perry are the co-founders of Von Perry LLC, the construction company responsible for the project.
“This is pioneering technology,” Joseph told Dallas Morning News. “All of the walls of the house will be made out of concrete with a 3D printer from a company in Minnesota.”
Construction of the house begins with a concrete foundation. Then a computer-guided machine “prints” the interior and exterior walls, laying them layer by layer.
Joseph says the total printing time would take about forty-eight hours, but the process takes about a week because they print around twelve to sixteen inches in one sitting. Weather is also a factor, as the process cannot be conducted in the rain.
Once the walls are constructed, they are finished with stucco to “make it look nice,” he says.
Excluding the price of the land, the house will cost less than a median-priced North Texas home. Joseph estimates it will be priced somewhere between $200,000 and $220,000. That’s about $120 per square foot, compared to the usual $135 in DFW, he adds.
Earlier this year, developer 3Strands paired up with construction and technology company ICON to build a neighborhood of four 3D printed homes in East Austin.
The constructions utilize ICON’s 3D printing technology to construct what the project partners say are sturdier and safer homes to meet market demand.
Logan Architecture designed the homes to be highly energy-efficient and 3D-printed using ICON’s Vulcan construction system.
The building materials used are allegedly more resilient than those used traditionally, designed to withstand damage from natural disasters like fires, floods, and high-speed winds more effectively than conventionally constructed homes.
“Fundamentally, our country’s housing crisis is a supply issue,” said Gary O’Dell, CEO of 3Strands, in a statement about the East Austin development.
“3Strands is working to solve this by pushing the boundaries of new technologies that address root causes of this supply issue. By 3D-printing these homes, East 17th Street is a significant advancement for the future of construction.”
The new technology may help alleviate that supply issue because developers can build homes with less labor.
“We have a labor shortage in the industry,” Joseph said, but one advantage of 3D printing homes could help with that: “It only takes three people to operate this set-up on site.”
Though the pioneering technology looks promising, Joseph says it could take decades to see 3D printing become a large part of housing production, if that happens at all.
“All of these houses being built now are some kind of test,” Joseph said.