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A comment on Western Australia’s Fastbrick robot building home in three days a ‘world-first’.

Re:Western Australia’s Fastbrick robot building home in thre... by sien on Thursday November 15, 2018 @03:09AM (#18457670)
Their system uses some custom adhesive as do some of the other systems around.

The catch is how will this adhesive hold up in 30 years and are you brave enough to be that it works well on your house compared to the saving of using conventional systems?

This is why innovation in building is slow.

Fail fast is not possible. And there are often side effects. Just ask people with a metal framed house that creaks when it expands and contracts.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Western Australia’s Fastbrick robot building home in thre... by grecy on Thursday November 15, 2018 @03:13AM (#18457690)
Australia has extremely strict building regulations, codes and inspections. (My brother just built his own house there...)

I feel extremely confident this has been tested thoroughly, and it would not be allowed if it has not passed all tests.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Western Australia’s Fastbrick robot building home in thre... by AstralStorm on Thursday November 15, 2018 @04:14AM (#18457939)
The regulations do not handle reliability, only registration of detected failures.

Most building methods that are not known to fail catastrophically are allowed. (Including among others fires, water handling, short term structural collapse and invalid administration as well as cheating on plan vs implementation.)

So it is mostly bureaucracy.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Western Australia’s Fastbrick robot building home in thre... by roel_v on Thursday November 15, 2018 @04:17AM (#18457952)
There have been 'alternative' adhesives (i.e. not mortar) on the market for decades. Mortar is just hard to beat on price and flexibility. But the question 'are there non-mortar ways to build and are they safe' has been answered.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Western Australia’s Fastbrick robot building home in thre... by kristianp on Thursday November 15, 2018 @03:49AM (#18457820)
What about the gaps in the sides of the bricks? Do they get filled in?
[ Parent | on HN ]