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Comment by SamBam | Hacker News Reader

I can imagine it wouldn't be to everyone's tastes, but I actually find the end results, especially the interior shots, quite pretty. A little like being wrapped in burlap or sisal twine. I almost expect it to be fibrous to the touch.

I like that the layers remain as evidence of its construction technique, much like the exposed beam ends on the outside of adobe houses, or the 2x4 board impressions left on the outside of some concrete facades.

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If they can really get stuff done in 18 hours and the cost is as competitive as the article claims, then adding standard interior drywall and exterior cladding to make it look like a regular stick house shouldn't inflate the cost of the house too much. The time savings on labor, equipment rental, and other fixed costs might pay for it.

Building the walls of a concrete block house doesn't take much over 18 hours of labour either. You can't go up more than ~6 feet in a day because you need the bottom layers to gain strength before adding more on top, so you end up doing ~3 6 hour days.

This could be optimized further with things like block feeders/lifts to bring the blocks to the worker.

Yea honestly this is very similar to a building built from CMU and not adding siding or interior furring strips for drywall on a CMU build. Honestly, walls are one the faster things in building anyways. It's all the other finishing work where all the time is spent.

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