Already and this is the Daily This is the Daily OS. Oh now it makes sense. Good morning and welcome to the Daily OS. It's Monday, the nineteenth of August.
I'm Emma, I'm Nandini, a journalist here at the Dahlias.
Nandini is back on the pod today to talk us through a really interesting topic, three D printing three D printed housing to.
Be specific exactly. I mean, if you can't afford a home, why don't you three D print one? Three D printing technology is advancing rapidly and it means that houses can be built faster, cheaper and more sustainably, which got me thinking could three D printing be the solution to Australia's housing crisis. We'll tell you all about how this works, where it's being done, and what it means for Australia in the Deep dive. But first, Emma, what's making headlines.
The New South Wales Liberal Party is threatening to take legal action against the state's Electoral Commission. At least one hundred and thirty eight Liberal Party candidates won't run in the upcoming local elections after essential paperwork wasn't filed on time. The era was blamed on the Party state director Richard Shields, who was fired from his role last week. The New South Wales division of the Liberal Party requested more time
to formally nominate all its council candidates. However, electoral officials formally denied the extension request on Sunday. According to the New South Wales Electoral Commission, acting Commissioner Doctor Matthew Phillips was not satisfied that it was possible to lawfully extend the nomination period and that it would not be appropriate to do so given these significant ramifications it would have for the conduct of the elections.
Authorities in Wa have reported a surge in crocodile sidings in the Pilbar region. The States Parks and Wildlife Service has confirmed seven saltwater crocs sidings and four unconfirmed sidings on the Northwest coast so far this year. That's more than the combined total siding for the past decade. The Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions attributed this to increasing
saltwater crocodile populations and heightened public awareness. It noted some of the sidings could be the same animal as they are not individually tracked.
Thousands of people in Venezuela have taken to the streets in protest of alleged election interference by the government. Nicholas Maduro secured another term as Venezuelan president last month, despite exit polls predicting opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzales to win by a wide margin. Demonstrators gathered across Venezuela over the weekend
and in other countries, including Spain, Argentina and Colombia. Opposition leader Maria Karina Machado called for the government to respect the twenty eight July poll results, saying the world and everyone within our country must recognize that the elected president of Venezuela is Edmundo Gonzales.
And today's good news. Researchers with the University College London have made a breakthrough that could help unravel the scientific mystery of an ice age which covered most of the Earth's surface for eighty million years. It's believe the event turned planet Earth into a kind of snowball for the period. The freeze was thought to have eroded many geological records from the time. Now well preserved rock layers have been discovered in a remote cluster of islands off Scotland, revealing
new details and insights into life on Earth. Professor Graham Shields told the BBC the Discover captures a moment that is quote missing in all other localities in the world.
And anyone chatting about three D printed housing today. And this all stemmed from a bit of a deep dive that we ended up kind of spiraling into from some news that we saw out of the US where a company is nearly finished building an entire neighborhood of three D printed houses in Texas.
That's right, one hundred houses to be exact, which got me thinking about how three D printing could be used for social housing. Well, I wanted to understand more about how it works, but also the broader impacts it could have on construction, sustainability, housing and costs.
Okay, before we dive into some of those bigger picture ideas, how does three D printing actually work when we're talking about housing, Like, I'm kind of imagining an old school printer that I would like print off like colored pictures of actors from Twilight at home and then get yelled at because I use too much ink. But this is a very different kind of technology, right.
Yes, So if you've seen a three D printer. You know what it looks like, and just imagine that on a massive scale, kind of like these massive cranes that go over the foundations of a home and essentially three D prints the house. And it's used to print the walls of a home by piping out concrete mixture and it forms these structures kind of looks like icin And this is often done at a building site and then once those walls are up, the roof is added in separately.
There's obviously a pretty major project underway in Texas as mentioned, But is three D printing b used for housing on a scale like that anywhere else?
Well, there's been an uptick in three D printed dwellings globally. Some parts of the world have actually jumped onto this idea quite a while ago, like Dubai. Back in twenty sixteen, their government announced plans for twenty five percent of all buildings to be three D printed by twenty thirty.
That is a big plan. Is this something that's also happening in Australia or are there any kind of major three D printed housing projects that we know of?
Well, at first I hadn't heard too much about three D printed housing in Australia until last week, where the New South Wales government announced Australia's first social and affordable three D printed housing project. Construction is set to begin next month to build homes for tenants through the New South Wales government's Aboriginal Housing Office. Dubbo was chosen as the site for the pilot project because they had a large demand for social housing in the regional center.
So that's Dubbo in central western New South Wales. Now. Often big housing plan especially when we're talking about social housing projects that a government led, come with really big time frames. Do we know how long this is going to take?
This is the amazing thing about three D printing to me, because this project is expected to be completed in a sixteen week time frame and to give a gauge for that, according to the New Southwest Government, it would otherwise take forty weeks if this social housing project was being built using quote unquote traditional methods. And this is actually one of the big reasons people are so excited about three D printed homes. Like myself, I sat down with Brad Draper.
He's the managing director at Aboriginal Sustainable Homes and that's the organization that's working with the state government on this project. So here's what he told me about the benefits of three D printing in construction.
We can get the shell of a house up within twenty four to seventy two hours, depending on the complexity of the design. Now that's just the walls obviously, then you have to put your roof on the like as well, so two days. So that means we can do roughly one hundred and eighty houses per year with one printer. Now if we were to scale that up to fifty printers or one hundred printers or more, you're building eighteen thousand houses a year.
So we're talking about a government announcement though this social housing project for Dubbo. So has the opposition had anything to say about the plan?
So I reached out to the New South Wales Shadow Minister for Planning, Scott Farlow, and he told TDA that the Coalition welcomes new innovations and alternative construction methods to help alleviate the Carson crisis. However, he did warn that the state government will be judged on the delivery of new housing.
We are, of course, in the midst of a housing crisis, A cost of living crisis. So I imagine maybe that's what Farlow is kind of referring to when he says that people will be watching the government closely on this. We know that three D printing technology can build homes quickly, but what do we know about it in the context of kind of those broader issues.
So I talked to Brad Draper from Aboriginal Sustainable Homes about this topic, and he said that the construction industry needs to rethink its current strategies to one address the housing supply shortage that you've mentioned, but two to address a skills shortage in the industry.
If we continue to do what we're doing at the moment in not changing the technology and sticking with traditional builds of sticks and bricks, as I call, then we're going to be held to ransom by the shortage of trades within Australia at the moment.
So there's been this shift to three D printing because it's this time and cost effective way of constructing homes. But there's also a sustainability aspect to it, isn't there.
Yes, So three D printed homes are arguably more energy efficient, especially when it comes to the construction process because it produces less waste than traditional builds. Brad Draper said that the social housing project in Dubbo will create homes using a mixture that's two and a half time stronger than concrete. He said this reduces long term maintenance costs, which he called quote the biggest problem within social and affordable housing.
So we're talking about structures that are really built to last, but it isn't a perfect process just yet. What can you tell us about that?
So that mixture that I was talking about, which is twice as strong as concrete, it consists of fifty percent concrete and fifty percent fly ash. Now, fly ash is a waste that's created by coal fired power stations. So this mixture basically repurposes this waste to create material for three D printed homes. But while this material is really durable,
it ultimately comes from a non sustainable practice. Seeing a unsw lecturer Ali Kashani told me that researchers are looking into what other materials can be used to reduce carbon emissions without compromising the strength of a home. Kashani also noted that quote in terms of bushfires, three D printed homes are going to be more resistant compared to wood based products.
So there is a current skills shortage that is being faced by the construction industry. We've heard a bit about it in the news, We've spoken about it at the daily I was before this sort of labor shortage. Is this kind of three D printing technology a threat to the construction industry or is it something that could actually support it?
So I spoke to an industry expert and it seems like the sector is broadly supportive of innovative construction solutions. The chief executive of the Housing Industry Association, Simon Croft, told TDA that three D printing could offer greater efficiencies and he doesn't see it replacing current jobs, but rather quote working alongside them. He said that three D printing technology would support growth in areas of construction, including social and community housing and emergency accommodation.
Okay, so to recap, we've got support from social housing advocates, governments, researchers and the building industry. Where to next? What do we know about the fear future of three D printed homes?
Well, one emerging component of this technology that came up in my discussions with a bunch of different people was prefabrication, so think of it as an IKEA flat pack pre fabrication involves building parts of a home with a three D printer in a warehouse. Those parts are then transported
to the location and pieced together at the venue. This can include roofs and stairs, and there's some excitement about what this could mean for the mass production of homes as well as the affordability component.
So like we're talking about a ready to install flat pack home kit exactly.
And one other thing I wanted to mention that Ali Kashani from UNSW told me about was design, and he talked about how architects actually love working on three D printed homes because of the design possibilities that it provides. If you look up pictures and footage of the process, you'll see what I mean. But three D printed homes just look so futuristic. You see these curved walls and bumpy textures on the walls, and the way that the concrete mixture is piped out creates a really beatiful design.
Yeah. I was really surprised. Some of these homes look like high end luxury architecture, and it sounds like that could soon become the norm. So I look forward to our beautiful luxury high end homes. Nandini, it sounds like this is only the beginning for three D printing in construction though, so thank you so much for taking us through such an interesting topic.
Of course, I never thought I could get so excited about concrete you and me both.
Nandini has produced a really interesting video carousel on this topic as well, so if you want to hear more from the experts mentioned throughout the podcast, and if you want to get a better understanding of what it all looks like and check out how cool they look for yourselves, we will pop a link to that in the show notes. Thank you so much for listening to The Daily oz. If you enjoyed today's episode, please share it with a friend. Don't forget to follow or subscribe wherever you listen or
if you're watching us on YouTube. We will be back with another episode tomorrow. Until then, have a great day.
My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda Bunjelung Kalgadin woman from Gadaghl Country. The Daily oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and torrest rate island and nations. We pay our respects to the first peoples of these countries, both past and present.