TWO-STOREY HOUSE BUILT

The miracles of technology will never cease! Now, in mid-July 2015, the Chinese ZhuoDa group used their own 3-D printing technology formula that is confidential, to set up a villa in Xi’an in northwest China’s Shanxi province – in barely three hours! Besides a living room, bedroom, kitchen and restroom, it has complete plumbing, wiring, interior decor and other facilities for comfortable living.

This achievement is a huge improvement over what exists today. As the engineer responsible for the design and production of the 3D printed villa, explained: “Traditional construction requires half a year to build up a villa, whereas using 3D print modules, the process can be shortened to around a dozen of days.”

The modules were made in the factory using 3D printing technology. The cost per square metre, the People’s Daily Online estimated to be normally around $400-480. In this particular case, it worked out to $564 per square metre. Much of this is attributed to the reduction of transportation, labour, material, machinery and assembly costs. The low cost of producing the final homes is passed on to home owners. 3ders.org notes that that is how such homes become much more affordable than those built with the usual construction methods.

A representative of the ZhuoDa group said that about 90 per cent of the house was constructed at their factory. However, work like interior decoration, wiring, plumbing, kitchen sanitary ware, furniture and other facilities were already installed in the factory after they had been picked and chosen according to the house owner’s specifications.

The workers fixed all the modules of the house together by using only a few cranes to hoist the modules and place each in its proper location. The first room to be assembled was the living room. Then came the bedroom, kitchen and bathroom on the first floor. Finally, they put up the terrace, bedroom and utility rooms on the second floor. All in less than three hours.

The ZhuoDa people claim that the company sources its new materials from industrial and agricultural wastes and the houses can withstand earthquakes with a magnitude of 9 on the Richter scale in addition to being waterproof and fireproof.

The Zhuoda group’s vice president Tan BuYong elaborated on this 3D printed modular home by saying, “Thanks to our special materials, our rate of assembling houses is really fast. Since 90 per cent of the houses we build are completed in a factory prior to the actual on-site construction, we only need to do on-site follow-up work to complete a build. This not only avoids the pollution caused by traditional construction sites, but also dramatically reduces construction costs by thinking about houses as a traditional manufactured product.”