Largest 3D-printed neighborhood nears completion

GEORGETOWN, Texas (Reuters) – Like any desktop 3D printer, the Vulcan printer prints an object layer by layer, except this one is more than 45 feet (13.7 meters) wide, weighs 10 metric tons (4.75 tons) and prints houses.

This summer, ICON’s robotic printer will put the finishing touches on the last of 100 3D-printed homes in Wolf Ranch, a community in Georgetown, Texas, about 26 miles from Austin.

ICON began printing the walls of what it calls the world’s largest 3D-printed community in November 2022. The company says 3D printing homes is faster, cheaper, requires fewer workers and minimizes construction material waste compared to traditional construction.

“It brings a lot of efficiency to the trade market,” said ICON senior project manager Conner Jenkins. “So where before it might have been five different crews coming in to build a wall system, now we have one crew and one robot.”

After concrete powder, water, sand and other additives are mixed and pumped into the printer, a nozzle squirts the concrete mixture like toothpaste onto a brush. The mixture builds up layer by layer along a pre-programmed path, creating walls with a corduroy effect.

Printing the three- to four-bedroom single-story homes takes about three weeks. The foundation and metal roof are installed in the traditional manner.

Jenkins said the concrete walls are resistant to water, mold, termites and extreme weather conditions.

Lawrence Nourzad, a 32-year-old business development executive, and his girlfriend Angela Hontas, a 29-year-old creative strategist, bought a home in Wolf Ranch earlier this summer.

“It feels like a fortress,” Nourzad said, adding that he was confident it would withstand most tornadoes.

The walls also insulate well against the Texas heat, the couple says, keeping the temperature inside cool even when the air conditioning isn’t on full blast.

There was one more thing the 3D-printed walls seemed to offer protection against, though: a good wireless internet connection.

“Obviously, they’re very strong, thick walls. And that’s what gives us a lot of value as homeowners and keeps this thing very well insulated in a Texas summer, but the signal doesn’t travel well through these walls,” Nourzad said.

To help solve this problem, an ICON spokeswoman said most Wolf Ranch homeowners use mesh internet routers. These routers broadcast a signal from multiple devices in the home, as opposed to a traditional router that broadcasts a signal from a single device.

The 3D-printed homes at Wolf Ranch, dubbed the “Genesis Collection” by developers, range in price from about $450,000 to nearly $600,000. Developers said just over a quarter of the 100 homes have been sold.

ICON, which 3D-printed its first house in Austin in 2018, hopes to one day take its technology to the moon. NASA, as part of its Artemis Moon exploration program, has contracted ICON to develop a building system that can construct landing pads, shelters and other structures on the lunar surface.