What it's like to live in a 3D printed house: a visit to an eco-friendly manufacturing facility in Maine

A team from Maine has 3D printed houses from recyclable material. This could be a game changer for the climate and housing crisis, reports DW.

Photo: IStock

When Mark Wiesendanger saw a boat measuring nearly 8 meters long and weighing more than 2000 kilograms built on a 3D printer at the University of Maine, he wondered, “If they can print a boat, can they print a house?”

As director of development for the housing finance nonprofit MaineHousing, Wiesendanger helps finance affordable housing development in the northeastern U.S. state of Maine.

He says they had a severe housing shortage, with the state needing about 20 apartments for low-income families, partly due to a slowdown in construction following the Great Recession in the late 000s.

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So Wiesendanger decided to contact the man behind the boat building project about the possibility of creating low-cost, eco-friendly homes using a 3D printer.

New approach

Initially, Habib Dagher, the boat's engineer, was concerned about the limitations of 3D house printing technology. Dagher, executive director of the Center for Advanced Structures and Composites at the University of Maine, knew that creating a “more renewable, more recyclable and more flexible” home would require a new approach.

It took several years to figure out what this approach would be. A key factor was the opening of seven pulp and paper mills in Maine. This meant that there was a lot of local wood waste waiting to be used.

The engineer and his team saw an opportunity to turn waste into a 3D-printable building material by adding a bioplastic binding agent made from corn to the mix. He held the sawdust together.

The next challenge was that the scale of the project required building the world's largest polymer 3D printer. It is 18,3 m long, 6,7 m wide and 3 m high. Imagine two guides that run parallel to each other and are about the length of four medium-sized cars.

In November 2022, the first prototype of a small 3D printed house with a living room, bedroom, kitchen and bathroom was ready.

The surfaces are made from a layered biomaterial made from sawdust, which gives the appearance of solid wood. This contrasts with existing printed concrete houses, which tend to be boxy and gray.

The creation of the so-called BioHome took about three weeks. It was printed in four modules and reassembled on site in about half a day.

The prototype survived a year of extreme weather in the northern US, which included temperatures down to -42,7 degrees, heavy snowfall, hurricanes and heavy rain.

Meanwhile, the ongoing COVID pandemic has worsened the housing crisis, which a 3D printed house has been developed to solve. The availability of 20 additional rental units proved insufficient as residents of large cities such as New York began migrating to cheaper, more rural areas such as Maine.

The state's population of about 1,3 million grew by more than 25 in two years, putting further pressure on the housing stock. Property prices in many areas have increased by at least 000%. Wiesendanger soon reassessed the state's housing needs and estimated that approximately 30 housing units across all income levels would be needed by the end of the decade.

This presented the BioHome team with the challenge of rapidly expanding production.

Increasing production capacity

The building potential of a bio home already has an advantage over 3D printed concrete because Maine is too cold for 6 months to build with concrete.

Although the prototype initially took about three weeks to print at a rate of 9kg of material per hour, by the fall of 2023 this figure had risen to 226kg per hour.

At that speed, and with two print heads working together, the Composites Center could theoretically print a house in about 48 hours.

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The projected commercial value of the printed house will be around $40, as wood flour and bioplastic are relatively cheaper.

And unlike conventional homebuilding, 3D printing cuts a significant portion of labor costs—an advantage as labor shortages in the construction sector also make it difficult to create affordable homes.

According to Dagher, the carbon footprint of building a BioHome is about 30% lower than a traditionally built home. This was an important aspect of the project as construction accounted for almost 2021% of all CO40 emissions in 2, according to the UN Environment Programme.

But the project has several hurdles to overcome before it can go into mass production, including testing how the materials react to different climates.

Despite the challenges, housing advocate Wiesendanger is inspired by the expansion potential of these 3D-printed wood and resin composite homes.

“I like that they are completely recyclable and have little impact on the environment,” said Mark Wiesendanger. “They will be super insulated and cheap.” These houses will end up looking cool.”

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