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Comment by matthewfcarlson | Hacker News Reader

I love the idea of this. My wife and I watch a decent amount of Grand Designs are there are a few houses that experiment with the concept of cnc-cut block based assembly. I intend to build something like it someday (in the US, so it might be harder to find a manufacturer).

One thing that strikes me as at odds is that they tout their reusability as well as the customization aspect of the block. It’s cnc cut so they’re super accurate, but how would you reuse it in a different project? It’s like saying you can reuse puzzle pieces in a different puzzle. The shape may match but they won’t fit together.

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> I intend to build something like it someday (in the US, so it might be harder to find a manufacturer).

Its seems like every episode of Grand Design does include an almost spiritual journey to a glue-lam pre-fabricated wood factory in Germany. I’m not sure that stuff is as easy to get over here.

> how would you reuse it in a different project?

The blocks are standard sizes so you can reuse them like legos.

> Its seems like every episode of Grand Design does include an almost spiritual journey to a glue-lam pre-fabricated wood factory in Germany.

This is really weird to me because nobody builds like that here. Brick and concrete rule supreme and people living in wooden houses are seen as old hippies who cuddle with termites.

There's a misunderstanding here.

Glue-lams are not used for walls, they are used for floor support. While a lot of multi-unit concrete residential construction in Germany uses concrete for the floor without supports), for single family houses there it is still relatively common to span rooms with beams to create floor support.

This is also true for earthen buildings, which are remarkably popular (on a per-capita basis) in Germany. I say this as a US resident in New Mexico, where it is hard to imagine a place (Germany) less likely to use variants on the same best-practices as housing we build here.

My guess is by "reusable" the mean "reconfigurable", as you can presumably reuse at least some of the blocks when rebuilding or changing your house.

A lot of basic structural building materials (bricks, framing timber, roof tiles, etc.) are already fairly reusable to an extent. It's just labour-intensive to do so, therefore we often don't. I'm not optimistic that prefabbed structural components would be much better.

Yeah as soon as someone gets a demolition bill as high as the construction bill, the desire to reuse everything will disappear quick.

This also presumes in 40-100 years when a house presumably makes sense to demolish, the same standard design is still considered good and the new owner has heard of your weird bespoke construction style.

Consider that currently the age of a house maybe worthy of demolition is 1978 and earlier at this point, and many many people refurbish and renovate houses significantly older than that.

Reclaimed building materials are in high demand. Homes from the 1970s and older usually have excellent lumber, more often than not sourced from old-growth timber. My former home from 1949 sat on a 40-foot 12x12 solid cedar beam, for instance.

The only other stuff in the walls is either in demand (copper, plumbing metals) or we just throw it out (drywall, insulation).

So if these engineered materials are sturdy enough, I would give favorable odds to them being reclaimed.

A big reason reclaimed lumber is interesting is because it's generally plain straight high quality boards and can be used in things with an intentional weathered look. Wooden LEGOs will not have that sort of value, because unlike your 12x12 solid beam, these will be hacked up pieces of plywood.

Houses are already built from prefab modules (Wall panels, roof trusses, floor beams or even floor cassettes) in many markets, especially in Europe. The US lags somewhat but it's definitely the trend that a house arrives on a truck as a set of components that are lifted in place, rather than stick built.

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