Amidst the Land of Antiques, Home-Building Innovation

Five 3D-Printed Houses Going Up Outside Round Top

In a town known for old things, cutting-age technology is redefining how homes are built.

Round Top, the antique capitol of Texas, will soon be the home of five new 3Dprinted vacation rental homes.

The walls of three are already up, and a robotic arm is poised to begin “printing” the next two.

It’s all happening behind The Halles event venue on Highway 237 north of Round Top.

“They should be ready to rent by the Fall Show,” said Jim Kastleman, the CEO of Round Top’s Starred Sky Development Co. who has hired Houston-based Hive3D to build the homes. The project is officially called The Casitas at The Halles.

It’s nearly impossible to find places to stay in and around Round Top during the antique shows, but Kastleman is thinking far beyond the scope of antique show rentals.

“We want to jump into something bigger,” Kastleman said. “This has the potential to solve the housing affordability problem. Teachers, first responders, working folks have to leave Fayette County because they can’t afford to live here. This has the possibility to change that dynamic. It’s important to Fayette County, and quite honestly the world.”

The building process Hive3D uses is quite unique.

The 3D printer’s robotic arm spreads the thick material like toothpaste into strips layered on top of one another to form hollow walls. The walls are insulated and strengthened with a foam concrete-like substance and steel. The end result looks not unlike an adobe house. The materials are mixed on site, which creates a big savings as does the time it takes to build these, said Hive3D CEO Tim Lankau.

“The traditional home building process is not going to get faster, it’s not going to get cheaper,” Lankau said. “There’s this gap between what people are making and the cost of houses.”

But with the way Hive3D builds homes, Lankau said, they can cut 30-percent off the price of homes. Lankau said the units like the ones going up in Round Top take three days to “print” and about 30 days to finish out.

“We’d like to get a lot faster,” Lankau said. “Our goal is from dirt to move-in in 2-3 weeks.”

The houses going up in Round Top are all between 400-800 square feet, but Hive3D’s first project was a 3,150-square-foot home in Burton. The concrete-like substance Hive3D uses includes recycled fly-ash, a by-product of power plants, which helps makes these houses the first near-carbon-neutral 3D-printed homes in the world, those involved with the project say.

“To produce concrete takes a lot of energy, but this has a lot less transport and uses locally sourced materials,” Kastleman said. “It’s exciting because of the environmental component and from the affordability aspect. And this is all happening in little old Fayette County.”