UH-OH- World's First 3-D Printed Bridge

I saw this 3-D printed house video.. pretty cool idea.

Forbes wrote an article about why buying a pre-fab/small home is a mistake, but all the reasons reduce to begging-the-question arguments saying more-or-less "because you can't do some of the stuff you can with a large one" like it's not worth as much to sell and you can't own a large dog. um duh.

They also claim it's not less expensive in the long run because e.g. you'd need to rent storage space to store the same amount of stuff, and you'd have to rent a venue to have large "house parties" same as you did before.

Mostly the equivalent of saying if you buy a plug-in hybrid and then run it off the gas engine all the time you won't save any money as compared to a regular car. um duh.

For larger bridges the technology maybe lends itself best to the equivalent of the stone arch bridge but built out of some of kind high-durability strong-but-lightweight plastic.

like why not something like this but out of life-size "bricks":

A tiny house is not a small house. And most zoning doesn't allow them excep t for limited time use, like 6 months. They've been a fad for a while, I do n't see how anyone could live in them. They might find a place as a short t erm vacation home in the wilderness or something.

ept for limited time use, like 6 months. They've been a fad for a while, I don't see how anyone could live in them. They might find a place as a short term vacation home in the wilderness or something.

it is basically like a caravan and I'm sure it is a lot more comfortable th at the tiny apartments in some places

They need to work on the architecture somewhat, else we'll go from an expanse of ranchers to an expanse of these igloo looking things all over the place. Maybe they can hide them behind the landscaping if they keep the height down.

On Monday, April 2, 2018 at 4:30:20 PM UTC-4, Lasse Langwadt Christensen wr ote:

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xcept for limited time use, like 6 months. They've been a fad for a while, I don't see how anyone could live in them. They might find a place as a sho rt term vacation home in the wilderness or something.

that the tiny apartments in some places

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Most of them are on wheels.

Seems silly. Dumping concrete into molds works fine. And doesn't need

Wait... let me guess... it's 10 years in the future.

One can fasten a sheet of plywood in under a minute with a nail gun.

I've known people who lived in sailboats, but not many people can do that.

Pre-fab probably doesn't scale well for large structures with irregular features where a completed load-bearing section like e.g a full wall is too large to ship via truck or train.

The WTC center made use of a lot of pre-fab sections that were shipped by rail but it was an International-style skyscraper (repetitive, boxy and "modern") that like its little cousin the Prudential Tower in Boston was considered ugly and out of fashion well before 1980. Even so it didn't go up by magic

apologies for "ATM machine" faux pas

People still have to do the roof, doors and windows. Foundation! Small is the lefts reaction to big McMansions.

Aside; Perhaps I'm part hobbit, but I've always had this desire to live ~1/2 underground, basements with big picture windows facing south. Around here it's too wet, with a clay soil.

There is one sandhill on my property, I could dig in there. :^)

George H.

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cept for limited time use, like 6 months. They've been a fad for a while, I don't see how anyone could live in them. They might find a place as a shor t term vacation home in the wilderness or something.

If they sail around most of the time it's OK, there's a limited number of docks. GH

Only the left? Cheaply-constructed cookie-cutter from a stock plan McMansions, lined up row after row three deep whose only redeeming quality are providing maximum ostentatiousness and square feet of floor space at minimum build cost is the kind of "architecture" Howard Roark would've dynamited on principle.

Roof trusses are mass-produced and arrive on-site in a big stack on a truck .

The process of moving them onto the walls involves a crane and some busy ca rpenters putting in cross-bracing (which is all pre-cut).

Windows and doors are stacked up at your local builder's merchant. I've ins talled a couple into pre-existing holes (mostly where the predecessor had r otted out). If you've got an odd-sized window space to fill, it mostly make s sense to buy an over-sized unit, knock it apart, and cut it down as neces sary.

I haven't done that - but I advised one of my colleagues to do it after I'd build a whole funny-sized sash window from scratch, and knew how long it t ook. He said it was a breeze.

In Australia you pour a slab. Digging the hole takes the right earth-mover and installing the reinforcing iron is labour intensive, but it doesn't tak e long.

Small is mostly what you can afford. More money - more house.

I had a subscription to Fine Woodworking for a while - a present from my wi fe.

"Fine Homebuilding" implies rather larger projects. "Fine Woodworking" did cover build-it-yourself stairs, which is bigger than I'd ever take on.

Nothing futuristic about the general principle.

People with heat pumps have exploited thermal lag of soil - the temperature some 50cm below the soil surface lags the seasons by 180 degrees, by burying a long stretch of plastic pipe, and circulating water through it.

In summer they suck heat out of the house and dump into the soil under the house, and in winter they suck the heat out of the dirt under the house and use it to warm the house.

There was a great need for housing in the UK after World War II. Prefab housing filled the requirement for many years, and lasted a lot longer than the design called for. Some are the subject of preservation orders today! More info here:

Rock storage is 40 years in the past. ;)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs