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See inside a new 1,550-square-foot 3D-printed home in Virginiahttps://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/see-inside-a-new-1550-square-foot-3d-printed-home-in-virginia/slidelist/92882024.cms2022-07-14T21:08:12+05:30

See inside a new 1,550-square-foot 3D-printed home in Virginia

Brittany ChangJul 14, 2022, 21:08 IST

Virginia's latest 3D-printed family home has been unveiled, this time in Richmond.

But if you're in the market for a home in the state's capital city, you're already too late.

The home — a construction project spearheaded by Virginia Housing — has already been sold for $235,000 to a buyer who received a grant to help with the cost.

The off-white house is the first 3D-printed home in the city, according to Virginia Housing …

… and was built with help from partners like Virginia Tech, Alquist, general contractors, and housing nonprofits.

The 1,550-square-foot home was under construction for about a year before it was finally completed in late June.

But don't expect a fully printed home.

Like almost all 3D-printed houses, the exterior walls of the Richmond home are the only printed components.

The remainder of the home — like its foundation, roof, and interior walls — were built "traditionally."

To create these unique concrete walls, the team used Danish construction-tech company COBOD's popular BOD2 printer …

… which has also been deployed for projects like a 400-square-foot concrete home in Denmark.

Moving a printer of this magnitude from Denmark to the US is an expensive procedure.

To alleviate this financial pressure, Virginia Tech's Center for Housing Research used a $500,000 grant from Virginia Housing to help pay for the printer's delivery, according to a press release.

Despite this hefty investment, the walls' naturally layered and textured appearance are the only visible reminder of the 3D printer's work.

Besides this, the rest of the building looks like any traditional suburban house.

Inside, there are three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a covered front porch.

The fully electric home also has amenities like a laundry room, large kitchen with an island …

… plenty of windows in the living room, and smart home amenities.

It's everything you could ever want in a home, just built in a more unique manner.

And whether you love it or hate it, 3D printed homes seem to be here to stay.

Proponents of construction-tech say 3D printing can build homes quickly, efficiently, and some day, significantly more inexpensively when compared to traditional homebuilding.

It's still a budding construction method, but 3D printing is now increasingly being used to create more financially accessible homes and buildings.

In December 2021, Habitat for Humanity spent 28 hours 3D printing the walls of a three-bedroom, two-bathroom home in Williamsburg, Virginia, about an hour east of Richmond.

And in April, nonprofit Thinking Huts — which prints schools in developing countries — unveiled its first prototype in Madagascar.

The walls of the school were printed in just 18 hours.

A one-off home and school may not seem like much, but this could just be the beginning of the proliferated use of 3D printers to build homes, which is "now one of the many tools available to us to help increase housing inventory," Susan Dewey, CEO of Virginia Housing, said in a press release.

In October 2021, housing giant Lennar announced its plans to team up with construction-tech startup Icon to build a 3D-printed 100-home development in Austin, Texas.

And in late April, Alquist — which printed the Richmond, Virginia home's exterior walls — unveiled plans to build an additional 200 printed homes in the next five years throughout southwest Virginia.

A few hundred buildings won't satisfy Virginia's housing demands, but "the need is so great, Alquist wants to make an impact as quickly as possible," Zack Mannheimer, Alquist's CEO, told Insider in May.

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