roundearthervaxxer t1_j8hxwbm wrote
Reply to comment by ideabath in Can 3-D Printing Help Solve the Housing Crisis? - Standard construction can be slow, costly, and inefficient. Machines might do it better. by speckz
If it significantly lowers the cost of manufacture, which it has the potential to do dramatically, it puts more people in homes. It doesn’t solve anything, but it has potential to ease the pressure and improve accessibility to ownership.
Scizmz t1_j8jic4o wrote
>which it has the potential to do dramatically, it puts more people in homes.
Except it doesn't. Because any reduction in costs gets offset by an increase in fees.
roundearthervaxxer t1_j8kmz4y wrote
wut
Scizmz t1_j8krg4l wrote
The amount that you can reduce costs on modern builds is limited. Mostly by the combination of what materials and methods are approved for building by municipal codes, but also based on several other factors. Realistically you wind up with a lot more fees for inspections and permits, mello-roos or the local equivalent, and lots of other cost structures municipalities throw up. New building is a huge revenue generator for municipalities. So they do their damnedest to make sure that the property taxes are as high as they can get them on new construction.
roundearthervaxxer t1_j8lelai wrote
I can imagine that finishing, plumbing, electrical is a bulk of the cost. What percentage is pouring foundation m, framing and exterior?
Ultimately plumbing and electrical could be printed too, perhaps interiors as well.
Scizmz t1_j8ljpkh wrote
That's the thing, the foundation's cost is digging, reinforcement and framing for it. The actual concrete is a small fraction of the cost.
The bigger issue is that you'll never get materials approved to build out as things stand with current materials technology. Concrete is great for compression, so stacking things on top of it, it's great for holding them up. But when it comes to sheer stress, it will crack and shatter like crazy. 3d printed homes just wouldn't stand up to weather and conditions that they'd need to in order to be cost effective and meet building codes. Then there's the reinforcement and need to run all kids of stuff through the walls.
After you get over all of those hurdles, you still have to deal with the fact that in various places weather can be very sporadic. And as such the drying and curing of a house would not be even or consistent.
You're better off building a house modularly or even building panels in a factory, then shipping them to site. You get the materials that are optimized for the climate, the conduits and piping needed, and it can be built to the point of exterior weather proofing before a 3d printed house can cure.
roundearthervaxxer t1_j8lluw1 wrote
Awesome. Thx for the detailed explanation. High-end prefab houses always seemed like a good idea to me. My grandparents had a Sears house that was shipped via rail.
It seems like things could have gone more in that direction. With modern tech could you ship perfectly interlocking wall units? If so, why isn’t that standard.
With cad it seems like you create some really cool designs.
TheQuarantinian t1_j8p2q1q wrote
If you can build a house for $80,000 and sell it fot $100,000 you will be happy.
If you can build the same house for $40,000 and still sell it for $100,000 you are not going to lower the price.
roundearthervaxxer t1_j8pi28s wrote
No but the competition will. Farther down in this thread someone who is knowledgable explained this to me. Finishing costs, plumbing, electrical, these things are a large portion of the cost. It is better to prefab wall units and transport them onsite
TheQuarantinian t1_j8pmrwp wrote
The competition still won't. They'd be dumb not to.
You receive two job offers, both paying 100,000/yr. You like both equally, benefits are the same, everything is identical except one requires you to spend $10,000/yr on transportation and parking and the other $1,000. Do I need to ask if you will accept the one with lower costs and tell them your labor is worth $9,000/year less?
Unless the motivation and goal is to sell cheaper houses the developer won't. And there isn't really any competition - it isn't like a restaurant or a shirt,there is one lot for sale just as there is only one year of your time for sale.
If the builder can sell the house for a million he will sell it for a million if he has to pay a plumber or not. And why wouldn't he?
Now if there are two identical units side by side and one needed a number and the other not and only one buyer then that's different. But when there is only one developer building every house in a 50 acre subdivision or condo highrise then they will minimize expense but maximize sale value wherever possible.
roundearthervaxxer t1_j8qji03 wrote
Developers never undercut each other?
TheQuarantinian t1_j8r4tvn wrote
Not like airlines or gas stations - you generally don't see price wars for a couple of reasons:
- You can't make more. You have only one shot to sell that specific lot
- Real estate opportunities are drying up: you'll probably never get another chance to build another sub in that division again unless you can do a lot of demolition
- If demand falls you just stop building and wait. Land doesn't expire or go out of style
- If you sell a unit for 100,000 then sell the one next door for 80,000 you affect the value of the first one and establish a trend that affects the value of the third one as fewer people want to buy in a neighborhood where prices are falling. Again, the best option is to just stop building rather than cutting prices. There are some exceptions here, mainly multi unit buildings where you have to pay for ongoing maintenance if the unit is occupied or not, but the are a bunch of other differences there.
not-on-a-boat t1_j8ppfku wrote
The problem with housing access isn't buildings. It's land.
roundearthervaxxer t1_j8qje77 wrote
Isn’t it both?
not-on-a-boat t1_j8qlb0u wrote
No, it's mostly land.
You can't put more people into San Francisco. It's not because SF can't get building materials or construction costs are too much. It's because there's no land where you can build more housing, so people live further and further from the city center to find affordable housing.
You can make land more efficient by increasing the number of housing units built on the land. That's a great solution. But it has nothing to do with the labor cost of home construction.
doogiejonez t1_j9fer15 wrote
As the need to commute to work on a daily basis falls and universal basic income becomes a thing I think less and less people will want to live in the bigger cities.
High speed rails will help this tremendously.
not-on-a-boat t1_j9fmp70 wrote
The economics of high speed rail rely on density, though.
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