There’s no place like home — especially when it’s printed in five days.
A Dutch couple is now living in Europe’s first totally 3D-printed house, which could signal a revolution in home building, the Sun reported Saturday.
Elize Lutz and Harrie Dekkers’s new two-bedroom home looks straight out of “The Flintstones.” It’s just over 1,000 square feet and looks like a big boulder with windows.
But while it may appear low-tech, it’s the latest innovation in real estate construction and was printed at a nearby factory. Homes like this can be built in five days and rent in the Netherlands for just under $1,000 per month.
“It’s a form that’s unusual, and when I saw it for the first time, it reminds me of something you knew when you were young,” Lutz said.
The house is made up of 24 concrete elements printed by a machine that squirts layer upon layer of concrete before the finishing touches, including a roof, were added.
The layers give a ribbed texture to its walls, inside and out. The process uses concrete that is toothpaste-like in consistency. The printed walls are hollow and get filled with an insulation material.
Dekkers said the home has great acoustics — even just when he plays music on his phone, and for quiet time, the silence inside the insulated walls of the home is incredibly peaceful.
“It gives a very good feel, because if you’re inside you don’t hear anything from outside,” he said.
“If you look at what time we actually needed to print this house it was only 120 hours,” said Bas Huysmans, chief exec of construction firm Weber Benelux.
“So all the elements, if we would have printed them in one go, it would have taken us less than five days because the big benefit is that the printer does not need to eat, does not need to sleep, it doesn’t need to rest,” Huysmans said.
The home is the product of collaboration between city hall, Eindhoven’s Technical University and construction companies called Project Milestone.
Theo Salet, a professor at Eindhoven’s Technical University, is working in 3D printing, also known as additive manufacturing, to find ways of making concrete construction more sustainable.
He told the Sun he doesn’t expect these 3D homes to start popping up everywhere, the process could be used with the building of traditional homes.
“If you ask me, will we build one million of the houses, as you see here? The answer is no. But will we use this technology as part of other houses combined with wooden structures…then my answer is yes,” he said.