The future of home building is increasingly looking like it will be high vis and high tech.
Victoria is just five to 10 years away from having homes regularly 3D printed in as little as 24 hours, with the technology already making inroads in the state’s new housing hubs.
And one of the builders leading the charge in Ballarat is also reporting a rise in inquiries from youngsters who want to go from 3D printing knick-knacks at home to a career in the space.
Structural engineer and Swinburne University lecturer Dr Hendrik Wijaya said 3D printing homes was one of the pathways towards cheaper housing.
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“Swinburne is working very hard to standardise it so we can build homes cheaper,” Dr Wijaya said.
He estimated that in the next five to 10 years 3D printing would start to become fairly common in new housing estates, and noted that while at present only the walls are printed — they were exploring ways of adding the roof and other aspects via the printer.
“We have a very, very clear pathway,” Dr Wijaya said.
“But I would say it will have its own market. It won’t work for all homes. But volume homes is where it has the best selling point.”
At the moment, the printer is rigged up in a space bigger than the house — but there are efforts underway to find more mobile solutions.
Dr Hendrik Wijaya from Swinburne University, believes Victoria is just a few years away from 3D printed homes becoming fairly common.
The Oasis Building Group is in the midst of 3D printing its second home in Ballarat, with a third already planned.
Their first took about 12 weeks to complete, about half the time they normally require, and is currently tenanted.
Founder and owner Ash Quiddington trained as a carpenter 17 years ago and has been a builder for about seven years, but three years ago decided to look into 3D printing homes.
Mr Quiddington said their builds were being completed using high-grade concrete, about three times stronger than the slab the homes sit on, meaning additional storeys could easily be added in the future.
The 3D printer is suspended above the build site via a gantry and builds the home from layers of high-grade concrete.
Renders showing the planned 3D printed display home for Oasis Group.
“There are no standards yet, so we are going further tick all the boxes,” he said.
“You could buy the house and in 10 years time they could just go up, and there’d be no need to reinforce the ground floor.”
While the builds are a “more premium product” today, he said there was an economy to the scalability of printing homes — and estimated that the printer could handle 50 townhouses on a single site in less than a year.
Requests from buyers have included everything from two to four-bedroom floorplans from people seeking their own home, developers and investors.
Mr Quiddington said he also believed 3D printing homes could solve a number of issues in the industry, with many bricklayers approaching him thinking 3D printing would give them a way to save their bodies and allow them to keep building homes longer term.
Oasis Homes Group 3D printing a house in Ballarat.
A render showing how their next home will look inside.
He’s also getting interest from younger Victorians looking to start a career in the industry, intrigued by 3D printing in a way they had not been by traditional construction methods.
Dr Wijaya added that further innovations including using smaller printers on robotic arms as well as off-site printing and even working with self-healing concrete were all being considered.
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