From fungi to robots, construction industry explores innovations for building Maine homes
Photo / Courtesy, Assembly OSM
In New York City, Assembly OSM prefabricates building components at its New Jersey manufacturing facility.
From fungi-based materials to robots that can assemble entire building units, the construction industry is working on a lot of strategies to advance twin goals of affordability and sustainability.
One example is the University of Maine Advanced Structures and Composites Center’s BioHome 3D, a type of house manufactured by a 3D printer with ink made of wood residue.
“I believe this technology will soon be faster, cheaper, more energy-efficient and the most environmentally friendly means of constructing new homes in Maine,” Mark Wiesendanger, director of development for MaineHousing, said of the approach.
Wiesendanger spoke Tuesday at the first-ever Maine Forest Biomaterials Week, a three-day event highlighting research in forest biomaterials and other innovative products, practices and technologies in the state and beyond.
Hosted by the University of Maine’s Office of Strategic Partnerships, Innovation, Resources and Engagement, the Advanced Structures and Composites Center and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the event was held Aug. 28-29.
Housing needs
The event addressed one of Maine's most pressing needs, housing.
Wiesendanger said that affordable housing is defined as an owner not paying more than 30% of their income for all of their housing costs. For a person earning $40,000, 30% is $12,0000, or an affordable housing limit of $1,000 per month.
Most of the housing financed by MaineHousing — an independent quasi-state agency with a mission to assist people in obtaining quality affordable housing and services suitable to their housing needs — targets people who earn 60% of area median income or less. In Portland, area median income is about $100,000. So 60% is $60,000.
“So we’re talking about people who are teachers, EMTs, police officers,” he said. “They can’t afford housing in these towns.”
In the MaineHousing pipeline are now 94 projects totaling 3,702 units for a total project cost of over $1.4 billion. That comes to a construction cost of $350,000 to $400,000 per unit — a “shocking” amount, he said, but hard to overcome due to factors like rising construction costs.
“It limits our ability to create as much housing as we need,” he said.
According to a 2023 housing production needs study by HR&A Advisors, Maine needs about 38,500 additional homes now to make up for lack of production in the past.
Meeting Maine’s future needs would mean creating 9,000 units per year for a total of 80,000 units by 2030. But right now Maine has about 4,800 homes approved for building permits each year, he said.
“Planning for the future means looking at new technologies and new ways to create housing,” he said.
The BioHome 3D is one prospect, he said.
While housing can typically take up to 18 months to build, the energy-efficient BioHome 3D took about two weeks to print and assemble. In the near future, he said, it’s expected that it could be printed in two to four day and assembled in half a day.
The change in timing could mean a huge adjustment in the cost of projects, he said.
“If we can build units like this in a couple of days versus several months, it will save time and money and help us more quickly address the housing needs we have in Maine."
Additionally, the printing material makes use of an existing waste product in Maine’s lumber industry, that companies now pay to get rid of. Given the rising cost of construction materials in conventional construction, 3D printing could be significantly less expensive, he said.
Fungi walls, green roofs
Like the Advanced Structures and Composites Center’s development of wood waste to make biocomposite construction materials, okom wrks lab in Chicago is developing a construction biocomposite from a fungi called mycelium.
The result has structural load-bearing properties, said Sam Ruben, a Michigan-based entrepreneur who works on innovative construction solutions and policies.
Ruben — the co-founder of Mighty Buildings, HyWatts and BuildTech VC — offered an overview of a number of companies developing innovative materials and processes for construction.
In California, Tangible Materials provides a platform to help developers collect, analyze and use their construction data to make decisions focused on decarbonizing commercial spaces. Urban Machine is using robotics and artificial intelligence to automate the reclamation of used lumber. Kit Switch creates modular, ready-to-install kits for simplified interior builds.
BaleBlox uses bio-based material to create interlocking construction units with built-in wiring and plumbing conduits.
Zauben, in Chicago, is creating “living wall” systems and green roofs.
In California, Airbuild is making microalgae-powered panels said to passively capture carbon emissions, generate clean energy to offset energy bills and purify water for non-potable use.
Savick, in Canada, prefabricates wall, floor and roof elements using local straw and lumber.
In Maine, TimberHP makes wood fiber insulation. In Maryland, InventWood also uses wood to develop construction materials, while California’s BamCore does the same using bamboo.
Robots
In California, Diamond Age 3D started as a 3D printing company and recently pivoted to construction automation through the use of robotics, said Cole Young, the company’s CEO.
Discussions around affordability and sustainability drove the pivot, he said.
The company is producing panelized walls, and plans to move to floor joists and roofs in the future.
The use of robots helps to solve the problem of labor shortages, he said.
The panels are made from light gauge steel, which is stronger and lighter than wood, doesn’t rot and is recyclable.
Robots reduce the time for the entire build process by 20%, compared with conventional construction methods, said Young. It minimizes material waste by 30%. Software allows the company to make custom wall panels.
Diamond Age turned to light gauge steel panels earlier this year and started delivering them in July.
“We’re full steam ahead,” he said.
Prefab
In New York City, Assembly OSM is tackling the challenge of high-rise construction innovation that works in cities, said Alexandra Donovan, the company’s design and innovation lead.
The company prefabricates building components at its New Jersey manufacturing facility.
The components then get stacked at the construction site like Legos. The components, or “pods,” can be customized to fit into irregularly shaped sites.
A bathroom pod, for example, can be prefabricated off-site complete with tiles and mirrors on the walls, then incorporated into the larger building system on-site.
The process is enabled through digital 3D modeling, down to the fasteners and including the line set-up, flow and on-site logistics.
The process results in speeding up construction schedules by 50% and reducing operational carbon emissions by up to 75%, she said. Projects are deigned to passive house standards.
“The bottom line is there’s so much room for improvement in the construction industry and an urgent need for higher-quality and more-affordable housing,” she said.
Modular units
In Maine, Consigli Construction Co.’s work includes off-site construction of modular units that are then assembled on-site, said Matt Tonello, project executive.
A recent project was Colby College’s Johnson Pond Houses, a 40,000-square-foot residence hall housing 200 student beds.
Prefab allowed the building to turn over quickly, he said.
The project included pre-cast concrete foundations, with the development of 35 concrete panels that included every penetration, lifting device, reinforcing detail and finishing requirement.
KBS Builders Inc., a modular home building in South Paris, pre-fabricated structural units that allowed in-factory framing, electrical, plumbing and fire protection installation. The structural units were designed to deliver nearly complete interiors for all spaces except the corridors and pre-cast basements. The structural unit pre-fabrication occurred simultaneously with site preparation, foundation and steel fabrication. Interiors included the installation of drywall, light fixtures, electrical outlets, flooring and finish paint.
Insulation composites
Retrofitting the huge amount of old buildings in the U.S. is another tricky problem; said Nolan Hayes, a research and development associate staffer with Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.
Over half of U.S. buildings were built before energy codes existed, around 1980, he said.
That means there’s likely little to no insulation in the walls of older buildings, unless they’ve been retrofitted, making them on average 23% less energy efficient.
Retrofitting every older housing unit in the U.S. — 6.3 million of them —could result in $17 billion in potential cost savings to households.
Adding insulation can be tricky due to inaccessible spaces, which often require demolition.
In Europe, he said, the construction industry has been tackling the problem by adding an overclad panel retrofit, like a jacket of insulation on the building exteriors.
Buildings in the U.S. tend not to be as uniform as in Europe, he said. And the additional load-bearing capacity of exterior panels on stick-built home construction is limited.
Research at Oak Ridge National Laboratory is working to make envelope retrofits easier for single-family houses, he said.
That includes the uses of a digital system, laser scanning techniques and machine learning algorithms to measure envelope dimensions, along with the development of lightweight, composite panels to be installed over exterior walls to increase insulation. The composite consists of insulation foam board sandwiched between glass fiber mats.
Three-dimensional modeling can be used for fast and accurate installation of the prefab components in real time, reducing installation time by 50% and improving the accuracy of installation.
The lab plans to roll out a demonstration of the technologies in January 2025 on a full-scale building retrofit.
“Even if we build enough houses, we still have all these older buildings,” he said. “We have to make them more efficient.”
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