What It Feels Like Inside a 3D-Printed House

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Walking through the doors of Dr. Habib Dagher’s Wonder Lab at the University of Maine (more accurately known as the Advanced Structures & Composites Center) feels a bit like peeking behind the closed-off walls of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. Over here is the technology for offshore wind turbines that float, over there is a bridge in a backpack (almost literally). In the next room there is work being done to help NASA land spacecrafts more smoothly on Mars. Adjacent to that, University of Maine undergrads and graduate students are doing cutting edge research on one of the most pressing issues our time: the elimination of potholes. Can they build a better road? These students seem to think so. They have been invited to Chicago, Paris, and beyond to make their case. And there is Dr. Dagher himself, joyfully showing off his latest inventions and earth-altering ingenuities. The only thing missing is a chocolate river.

If the ambitions around infrastructure, clean energy, and space were not enough, step out the back door of the lab and you may catch a glimpse of the end of America’s housing crisis (and, perhaps eventually, of the world’s). There sits BioHome3D, the world’s first 3D-printed home made entirely of bio-based materials.

The term “printed” conjures up frustrations related to getting the right ink cartridge into the printer, struggling to connect said printer to the computer, and then hoping the paper doesn’t jam coming through the rollers. You don’t think of objects as big as a house (or a boat, for that matter, which Dr. Dagher’s lab has also printed). But 3D printing is taking the world by storm including right here on the campus of the University of Maine.

I had the chance to tour the lab and see BioHome3D this week with my fellow board members from Maine Community Foundation. The home is remarkable. Even on a cold and snowy day, the airtight structure felt warm and welcoming. The layout was simple: a bathroom to the right of the door when you enter, a single bedroom straight ahead, and a short hallway leading to an open-concept kitchen and living room. Drywall was added to certain sections just to give the interior a homey feel, but it is only for aesthetics; the printed walls themselves are sturdy enough to support the roof and provide their own level of ambiance and warmth.

Dr. Dagher told us the home was printed in several modules that were then assembled together piece by piece in half a day. Within a few hours the house had power with the work of just one electrician. Not only are the walls, floor, and roof all fully printed and made entirely of wood fibers and bio-resins, but construction waste was nearly eliminated because of the precision of the printing process. Several decades from now, the entire home can be recycled into new materials because it was made with bio-based materials to begin with.

The vision for the 3D-printed home is that someday it can be mass-produced in laboratories like the one at the University of Maine. The production will greatly reduce supply chain challenges as the bio materials themselves are widely available right here in Maine and elsewhere. Labor needs, too, will be significantly reduced. At this particularly model home, a kitchen was fully installed after completion and there was the aforementioned electrical work plus plumbing, but the need for contractors and laborers will be significantly less with a 3D-printed process like this one.

Will it catch on? I say certainly yes. The opportunities are endless and exciting. Dr. Dagher demurred on estimating the costs of production when I asked him. Many of the expenses are up-front in the significant investments in research and technology so the per-unit cost will be quite high initially. But when the homes can be mass-produced and the costs can be amortized over virtually endless numbers of homes, the per unit cost will drop precipitously. Dr. Dagher expects that eventually they will be able to print a full house every 48 hours.

What is the market for these homes? Once they are a cost effective option in mass production, the options for affordable housing communities are limitless. There is such significant need for new home inventory in the $100,000-$200,000 range, which is where I expect these will someday land depending on the market. But other options exist among potential buyers as well. Eco-minded homeowners will love the low carbon footprint of both the production process and long-term maintenance of a home like this, and I can imagine homes popping up all over the country for consumers with this in mind. A home like this hooked up with solar panels and a well can be completely off the grid. Eco-tourism is an option, too, as it would not be surprising at all to see these 600 square foot homes installed all along the rocky coast of Maine and elsewhere as AirBNB’s and vacation rentals if not full-on homes for residents and retirees. Moreover, the home is single-level, which makes it particularly attractive for the elderly or those with mobility issues.

Are homebuilders nervous? Probably not at this point. The demand for new home construction is still high, and most homebuyers still probably want a level of craftsmanship and uniqueness that cannot necessarily be achieved at the current time by 3D-printers. Most homebuilders I talk to are still reporting lengthy waitlists even with interest rates rising at a rapid rate.

That being said, technology like this is coming. Just as with advances in things like computers and mobile devices that took years of use to before becoming as ubiquitous as they are today, 3D printing and other technological advancements are likely to be commonplace someday. This provides hope that the efficient and cost-effective mass production of 3D-printed homes will significantly ease our housing crunch, but it will also be highly disruptive to existing industries related to homebuilding and construction and to the people in them. Many homebuilders today might scoff at the notion of losing work to a printer, but industries and ways of doing things evolve and the pace of that evolution at least here at the University of Maine appears to be accelerating.

To read more about BioHome 3D via the University of Maine, click here. You can also view a video of the printing process below. Project parters include the U.S. Department of Energy, the Maine State Housing Authority, Maine Technology Institute, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. I offer my gratitude and thanks to Dr. Habib Dagher and his team at the University of Maine as well as my colleagues at Maine Community Foundation for facilitating a wonderful tour this past week.

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Ben Sprague lives and works in Bangor, Maine as a Senior V.P./Commercial Lending Officer for Damariscotta-based First National Bank. He previously worked as an investment advisor and graduated from Harvard University in 2006. Ben can be reached at ben.sprague@thefirst.com or bsprague1@gmail.com. Follow Ben on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. Opinions and analysis do not represent First National Bank. © Ben Sprague 2023.