Massive 3D-printed community almost finished in Texas

Shawn Knight

Shawn Knight

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In brief: Icon is nearing completion of a planned community in Georgetown, Texas, consisting of 100 3D printed homes. The unconventional construction company started working on the project in the Wolf Ranch community in late 2022 and expects to wrap up work by the end of the summer.

Icon utilizes a massive 3D printer measuring more than 45 feet wide and weighing 4.75 tons. It uses a mixture of concrete powder, sand, water, and other additives to build walls layer by layer, squeezing out the mixture like toothpaste out of a tube. The resulting walls look like textured corduroy.

The single-story homes take just a few weeks to print, and rely on traditional foundations and metal roofs. The thick concrete walls are said to be resistant to water, termites, mold, and extreme weather, and help keep homes cool during hot Texas summers.

Icon senior project manager Conner Jenkins told Reuters that its process is faster and cheaper than a traditional home build, requires fewer workers, and also minimizes material waste.

One potential downside is the fact that the 3D printed walls are incredibly effective at blocking wireless signals. This has prompted some early adopters to opt for mesh Wi-Fi systems for whole-home connectivity.

Pricing starts at just under $470,000 for a three bedroom, two bath home with 1,574 square feet and tops out near $600,000 for a build with closer to 2,000 square feet. Developers told Reuters that roughly a quarter of the 100 homes have already been sold.

For Icon, it's onward and upward. In late 2022, NASA awarded the Austin-based company a $57.2 million contract to develop construction technologies to help build infrastructure like buildings, roads, and landing pads on the Moon.

Icon also built the 1,700 square foot 3D printed Mars Dune Alpha that volunteers recently lived in for a year to simulate life on the Red Planet. The first wave of participants, who emerged from the habitat in July, spent 378 days in near isolation in the simulated environment to help NASA prepare for a future mission to Mars.

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Massive 3D-printed community almost finished in Texas

 
Prices per sqft are not very competitive for Georgetown, TX. You could either pocket the 120-150k difference or do some serious renovation to an existing property.

Also, I wonder if the WiFi signal issue would be improved or even resolved by smoothing the texture of the interior walls?
 
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This reminds me of a similar innovation in the 1920s -- bankrolled by no less than Thomas Edison himself -- where entire apartment buildings were formed of concrete: walls, floors, even bathtubs and kitchen tables -- all in a single monolithic pour. It bankrupted Edison, and I don't see the "3D printing" aspect of this substantially addressing the deficiencies in the process.

Lew Zealand said:
Pro tip: Choose the open floorplan layout for Wifi coverage.
Click to expand...
I actually consider that a positive. Get a mesh system internally, and worry less about hackers attacking you through your walls.
 
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I don't know. Feels more like novelty than actual conventional economical homes.

But, the Z gen nowadays want something new. And they don't mind paying more than it's worth. **Shrugs**
 
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Can't help but think you'd do better building partially underground. That would provide better insulation and would presumably require less materials. You could even go fully underground if you used light tunnels in the roof. The rooves on these buildings should also be solar in this day and age.

3D printing is fine if you're trying to build something unique but, if you're building a fairly standard looking home, wouldn't you do better building the sections (walls etc) in advance off site and then just joining those sections together on site?

The problem with concrete is it takes a lot of energy to produce the materials and relies on the diminishing resource of construction sand (different to desert sand). I just don't know if it's a viable direction to be taking in construction for homes.

 
opckieran said:
Prices per sqft are not very competitive for Georgetown, TX. You could either pocket the 120-150k difference or do some serious renovation to an existing property.
Click to expand...

Indeed. I actually bought a house in the area, and without giving away too much personal information, let's just say that a home in Georgetown vs a home within a 15 minute drive, with the same exact floor plan, from the same builder (not the one mentioned in this article), with the same appliances and so on, costs 200k cheaper. The home I bought is a few hundred square feet larger than $470,000 home quoted in the article, and was, well, exactly 200k cheaper (within +/- a few thousand), although it was a couple years ago.

Austin and the whole area ballooned during the pandemic, and while the price increase has slowed, it hasn't really gone down, and I don't expect it to anytime soon.

The sad thing about this project is that the 3d printed homes, which supposedly cost less to construct, aren't being used to provide sorely needed affordable housing. If they truly cost less, as the builder claims, it appears the company is just pocketing the difference. Their prerogative, but a waste.
 
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Adhmuz said:
Video of the process and more details for anyone interested:

Click to expand...
Hey, no termites, good insulation, better storm resistance and easy to work on. If they can get the price a little more competitive, as I'm sure they will as they technology becomes more common, I'm in, as long as I find a builder who has thought out the details like these guys seem to have done.
 
mbk34 said:
Can't help but think you'd do better building partially underground. That would provide better insulation and would presumably require less materials. You could even go fully underground...
Click to expand...
Quite true -- but a primary selling point in any new home is the number and size of windows, despite the fact that every window leaks heat at 5 to 10 times the rate of a well-insulated wall.
I read once of a gentleman who purchased an old underground missile facility in Kansas. His monthly HVAC bill for 20,000 square feet of living space was a tiny fraction of what most people pay for a home 1/10 that size. But until the zombie apocalypse arrives, most people are going to shun underground siloes.

mbk34 said:
The problem with concrete is it takes a lot of energy to produce
Click to expand...
There are pros and cons to every building material. In dry California, for instance, wood-frame buildings last nearly forever, and bear up under earthquake tremors better than concrete. In Florida, however, wood buildings rot fast, and concrete structures handle hurricane-force winds much better.
 
Still very slow compared with timber construction, as well as reinforced concrete elements. Better than in situ cast concrete in some ways I guess, but that doesn’t really matter since that’s not a heavily used technology in housing these days anyways…
 
Watched much of the video and FF'd some too but was quite disappointed that they didn't seem to show any of the printing in progress, seems like something you would be sure to capture and was the main reason I watched it.
 
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