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3D-printing a home in Richmond

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Category: research Video duration: 3D-printing a home in Richmond
The Printing for Affordable Concrete Housing and Training (PACT) project out of Myers-Lawson School of Construction in CAUS prototyped and is constructing a 3D-printed concrete home in Richmond. The pilot project will explore the cost savings and efficiencies of using concrete 3D-printing technology to build affordable homes in Virginia and beyond. Researchers are printing the 1,400-square-foot home on site using a massive, modular 3D-printer called COBOD2, a technology pioneered by the Danish that readily adapts to any location and design.
Here on this site were building the first 3D concrete print at home in the State of Virginia. We were lucky enough to receive a grant from Virginia housing that would allow us to demonstrate an innovation in practice in the field. And so we partnered with a group out of Iowa called alkalis to 3D and the local general contractor named RMT construction. And together we're commercializing a new innovative process into the market. And that's 3D printing. If you look at the rest of the world, many build with masonry, in fact, the majority of it. And this is going to be a lot like what you would have with a masonry home or a brick home in terms of its durability, its quality. This is something that's highly customizable. It has the ability to have any kind of finished you want. If you don't like concrete on the inside, you can do many other types of finishes, but it's very durable on the outside as well. I would really compare it to if you had a brick home, except this time it's going to be concrete. Some people might like the pattern that you have from printing. Some people might not. So we would actually cover that pattern up with some kind of a coding scheme. Coding graduate students are helping us with measuring the house in terms of its performance efforts built. They'd been helping us from this from the beginning with planning how the house would be designed and how it would be highly efficient. In terms of energy. You're he