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"The 3D-printed home is more resistant to tornado and hurricane damage than lumber," says Habitat for Humanity Peninsula and Greater Williamsburg CEO Janet V. Green.
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The 3D printing construction phase of the 1,200-square-foot, three-bedroom house began in mid-August and will be completed by the end of 2021.
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The 3D printed home includes an open space concept for the living room, dining area and kitchen.
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Rob Osterrmaier Consociate Media
The 3D printer, developed by Copehagen, Denmark-based COBADm is a first of its kind in the world. Photo used courtesy of Consociate Media, Gloucester Point.
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Rob Osterrmaier Consociate Media
Labor and man hours necessary to print a 3D home are less than those of a traditionally stick-built home. Crews with as few as three workers can manage the entire job. Photo used courtesy of Consociate Media, Gloucester Point.
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Rob Osterrmaier Consociate Media
Once completed, the foundation of the Habitat for Humanity house will have 170 printed layers. Photo used courtesy of Consociate Media, Gloucester Point.
Stereolithography. While the name suggests it should be linked to M.C. Escher, Diego Rivera or even Andy Warhol—all expert lithographers, by the way—the name you need to know is Chuck Hull.
And while you won’t find Hull’s work in the halls of the Smithsonian, at least not yet, the art he fathered is at the forefront of becoming one of the most influential in human history. That’s because stereolithography is the formal name for the technology we call 3D printing.
This technology has been widely used in manufacturing and engineering, healthcare, art and scientific research, but now it’s coming to a neighborhood near you. In Williamsburg, Habitat for Humanity Peninsula and Greater Williamsburg is introducing the technology in the form of a 1,200-square-foot, three-bedroom house.
The house, which began construction with its 3D printing phase in mid-August, will be completed by the end of 2021. Spearheading the project is Alquist, an Iowa-based company whose core tenet is lowering the cost of housing in rural communities. Alquist CEO Zachary Mannheimer, who has been doing rural revitalization projects across the country, discovered that 3D printing technology would achieve faster building speeds, lower costs and produce more affordable homes.
A meeting with representatives from Virginia Tech in 2019 led to the parties joint filing for a grant to fund the first 3D home in Richmond, Virginia, which was placed on the open market. The collaboration with Habitat for Humanity Peninsula and Greater Williamsburg, the company’s first, hits home with Mannheimer.
“We wanted to work with Habitat. Their mission is identical to ours, to make housing affordable for folks in need. We hope this is the first of many homes we do with Habitat,” he says.
What is a 3D-printed House?
To get a sense of how large Alquist’s printer is for this project, you’ll have to think of a familiar object to get a frame of reference. Take four standard yellow school buses, each 36 feet long. Butt each at right angles to form a square and you get the dimensions of its mid-size commercial 3D printer—minus four feet on all sides (the printer is 40 feet by 40 feet). Despite their behemoth size, these printers function like their smaller desktop counterparts.
“The printer moves on an X/Y axis—up and down and back and forth,” says Mannheimer.
And if you’ve ever lost 50 cents in a claw game, then you can visualize how the print head moves along the X/Y axis in the gantry frame structure. Same concept.
“Once you set the printer up, you pump water and concrete into a mixing station and that mixing station sends the cement through a hose and into the print nozzle and it prints the home layer by layer,” Mannheimer says.
The home in Williamsburg is 170 layers, which means a print time of around 20 hours to complete the four exterior walls, which are seamless, he adds.
Once the exterior walls are completed, the company will finish the home in the same fashion as a traditionally built house. Licensed subcontractors perform HVAC, plumbing, electrical and other services. According to Habitat for Humanity Peninsula and Greater Williamsburg CEO Janet V. Green, the 3D-printed home adds a layer of security not found in stick-built houses.
“Since the exterior walls will be made of concrete, it’s more resistant to tornado and hurricane damage than lumber,” she says.
Improved Environmental Impact
With the residential real estate shortage and home building and renovation taking center stage during the pandemic, lumber prices soared from $400 per thousand board feet in February 2020 to an all-time high of more than $1,600 in early May 2021, according to data from the National Association of Home Builders, adding more than $36,000 to the bottom-line cost of a new single-family home. This is where 3D-printed homes ease the burden on the environment while reducing the cost of newly constructed homes.
“This will be a very cost-effective method this time next year. The cost savings will come in three ways: the cost of printing the walls saves one to three weeks; labor is smaller, you need two to three humans to operate the printer; and material, cost of concrete is lower. And we’re exploring other materials to use besides concrete, and we want to find greener materials to use,” says Mannheimer.
“Concrete isn’t the most environmentally friendly material, but we’re two years away from finding new materials.”
One of the biggest environmental impacts of a 3D-printed home is energy efficiency.
“We’re dropping utility costs by 50% across the board,” Mannheimer says.
In switching from lumber to concrete, these savings get woven into the real estate market, potentially saving 10 to 15% across the board, and, by this time next year, he says, that could extend to above 20%.
“The ultimate goal of the company is to make housing that’s affordable in rural America across all 50 states by 2026,” he says.
Clearing Up a Common Misconception
It’s often believed that when someone occupies a residence built by Habitat for Humanity, they’re poor and the home has been gifted to them at no cost to the occupant. This is untrue. People placed in housing by Habitat for Humanity aren’t typically poor at all. Many have economic challenges that prevent their getting a standard mortgage.
“People think we give homes away to poor homeless people and we don’t,“ states Green. “All of our homeowners are not only gainfully employed, but steadily employed for years.
“Every home sold in the United States and in almost 100 different countries worldwide is sold to the partner families at a no-interest mortgage that is paid back. The family pays it back to our Habitat and we call it a fund for humanity where we recycle it and build more homes for deserving families with lower incomes.”
This 3D-printed home will be purchased by a working mother named April, who has worked steadily for five years at a large local hotel managing the laundry facility. Green says despite her steady employment and good credit, she wasn’t earning enough to get a conventional mortgage. So, Habitat will provide April with a 30-year mortgage she can afford.
“It will be no more than 30% of her income,” says Green. “[And with] this design being more energy-efficient, it will be truly life-changing for her. Not only will she have an affordable mortgage but affordable utility bills over the lifetime of her home.”
Another stipulation of occupying a home built by Habitat for Humanity is a partnership with the organization to help build not just your home, but also the homes of others in the area. They refer to this goodwill exchange as “sweat equity.”
“We ask people who apply [for homes] to have a steady income and good credit and to perform hundreds of hours building their home and other homes Habitat is building around the same time,” says Green.
April, who will live in the home with her 12-year-old son, will purchase the home in early 2022. She’s not the first in her family to find relief through Habitat for Humanity.
“My aunt went through the program about 10 years ago. She talked so good about Habitat, so I was willing to give it a try,” says April, who also admitted that the concept of having a 3D-printed home didn’t register.
“I was lost at first until they explained it to me; [they] showed me videos and pictures,” said April, who eventually trekked to Richmond to see Alquist’s first 3D home in Virginia (hers will be the second).
“It was an amazing sight to see,” she adds.
She’s eager to move in and make fresh memories with her son and credits Habitat for making the application process easy and the opportunity possible.
“What excites me about the program is making families happy; that they have somewhere to call home,” says April.
What’s Next?
For Green, it’s the power of the human imagination that impresses her most with the process. Witnessing firsthand how a company like Alquist can use technology to change lives inspired her.
“You need visionaries to think out of the box. Alquist and its CEO, Zachary Mannheimer, really thought out of the box on this one,” she says.
For Habitat for Humanity Peninsula and Greater Williamsburg, this 3D-printed home is most likely a one-off. As word spreads, interest in the technology by other Habitat affiliates, affordable housing advocates and for-profit builders will keep Alquist moving from site to site. The next stop: Exmore, Virginia, on the Eastern Shore, a rural community one-sixth the size of William & Mary’s student population.
“We’re going to print the first 3D-printed village in America; four homes side-by-side to help a rural community,” says Mannheimer. “It’s exciting to be at this point.”