Search location by ZIP code Iowa State plans 3D-printed houses for rural Iowa

Designers at Iowa State University are about to start making houses by printing them with a giant 3-D printing machine.

And the new process could help rebuild one flood-damaged Iowa town.“I'd like to think anything is possible,” said Pete Evans, ISU assistant professor of design.Evans is expecting to take delivery of a giant 3D printer in the next few months.It's an overhead gantry system with a computer nozzle that spits out concrete. Once it's set up on a job site, the machine slowly builds up structures, layer by layer.Eventually, those layers turn into walls.And with the addition of a roof, windows, doors and other trim it looks like a conventional house.

The big benefit? The whole process takes very little manpower and can be completed in a few days.“This will accelerate the construction of affordable housing so that we can automate some of that function, and also build more house more rapidly at a lower cost,” Evans said.

The plan is to use the 3D house printer to build an entire neighborhood in Hamburg, Iowa — a town devastated by flooding in 2019.

It's the first time the concept has been used in Iowa.“I'll be really excited to see what some of those potentials are, as an architect as a designer. Working with owners, I think the ability to deliver these projects is going to mean a new way to think about housing,” Evans said.The Iowa Economic Development Authority is paying about half the cost of the $2 million house printing project with the idea of private companies building more affordable housing in rural Iowa in the future.