3D printing a housing revolution with Jason Ballard of ICON

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2:49Make this holiday season your best yet at klaviyo.com. Hello and welcome to How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz. So a lot of places in the U.S. and in cities around the world are dealing with housing shortages. And these shortages are leading to all kinds of social and economic problems, things like really high home prices and even homelessness. Part of the problem is zoning, but the other part is the cost to build a house, especially with inflation. But imagine you could cut those costs by two-thirds or even more, and you could still build a great, high-quality, energy-efficient home. Well, this is what Jason Ballard set out to do.

3:37A few years ago, he started a company called Icon, and the idea was to use 3D printing technology to build houses. Fast forward to today, and the company has built dozens of these houses in Texas and in Mexico, with hundreds more in the planning stages. Now, before he launched Icon, Jason ran an eco-friendly building supply store called Treehouse with his college classmate Evan Loomis. But while Treehouse grew pretty quickly and has been largely successful, it wasn't long before Jason started to think about ways to make an even bigger impact. At the time, it was more like, could Treehouse be doing more?

4:15Because I was the CEO and founder of that company, and so that's where my focus was. And so I kind of made a list of things that I wanted to be true. about the way that we build. I want it to be sustainable. I want it to be affordable. I want it to be deployable at scale and with some speed. I want it to be beautiful and sort of respecting human dignity. And eventually it was only 3D printing that like actually I believed had the possibility of checking all the boxes. And so the first thing I did is I brought the idea to the board of directors of Treehouse. And I sort of explained all the research I had done.

4:47And I wanted us to invest in like a small amount of research and development to see if there was something here. And they said, Jason, that's it. You know, we love your heart and we sort of respect what you're saying, but that is actually like not our business. Like we're a retail and services company. And so I went away for a quarter and I came back to the next board meeting and said, hey, I respect that, but I can't shake this idea. And I would really like to pursue it. Do you mind if I work on this on nights and weekends? And this is actually a tricky question for your CEO, because like sort of almost legally, all of your creativity and work belong to the company you're working for.

5:22So we actually drafted up paperwork that said, you know, like all of Jason's intellectual property and creativity belongs to us, except when he's working on 3D printing. And so with the board's permission, I began on my own dime in my own time researching this kind of nights and weekends. Okay. You're researching this idea. Like, could we 3D print a house or could we 3D print homes that would be, would tick all the boxes I need to tick, environmentally sustainable, affordable, beautiful, et cetera. And of course, 3D printing technology was coming online and people were starting to even have little 3D printers at home.

6:04A lot of the material used at that time, and even now, was plastic-based, right? You are thinking about, okay, can this be environmentally sustainable? So initially, what materials were you thinking that would be used to build these homes? Yeah, I definitely initially thought you would want to use more conventional residential building materials. So like, things related to the things I know that we can build houses out of. I had, as a person who'd been following and involved in like, technologies for a bit, like, I had long sort of suspected, Like there's some like misapplication of 3D printing technology, right?

6:41We were using it to make small things that were already mass produced very affordably. Like a lot of times people were 3D printing coffee mugs and spoons and stuff. It's like, we already have a lot of those and they're made really cheaply. It occurred to me that like 3D printing would actually be super valuable when something was large, bespoke, and made very slowly. Like that would be an opportunity. And so a house is a perfect use case, right? Houses are quite large. They're constructed rather slowly over months and years. and they're very expensive. And so that would be an opportunity for 3D printing to actually make an improvement on the way that we build.

7:14And so I started working on that. And then I sort of called my old partner in crime, Evan Loomis. And he and I started meeting with anyone we could just to learn fast. We took little classes on 3D printing. We ordered every book on 3D printing off of Amazon, started meeting with other 3D printing companies just to learn and soak up the knowledge really fast. And we were introduced to another gentleman here in Texas that kept coming up named Alex LaRue. People kept telling me, there's this other guy here in Texas who is working on 3D printed housing. You all have to meet. Alex is like a true mechanical engineer.

7:50And Evan was sort of this background in like business and investing. And so at some point, somebody said out loud at a lunch or something, we should just all be working together. And then we did. Wow. All right, you joined forces. Let me ask you about a huge part of how you were going to make this happen, and that was concrete. You essentially land on this idea that concrete could be – this is before you figured out how, but you thought concrete probably is going to be the best material to use to 3D print a house. Now, it's interesting because concrete production, we've done this on the show, we've talked to people working on green cement and things like that.

8:30But still, as you know, it accounts for between 4 % and 8 % of carbon emissions. It is a carbon intensive material, right? And so you would think that like woods or wood polymers or things like that might be better for the environment. Tell me about concrete. Why did you land on concrete? You know, luckily, kind of having spent at that point, I had spent like over a decade in like sustainability and sustainability innovation. And I knew that sort of like the carbon that you're referring to is the carbon atmospherically released during the chemical reaction that produces Portland cement. That's the sort of that four to eight percent stature.

9:05Yes, right. But I knew that's not the whole story, right? There's also like the sort of operational carbon of like how does the building perform? Because like these are the issues we're fighting with stick-built homes, right? Is that they're very energy inefficient. Like, you know, stick frame houses, you have to insulate the heck out of them. So I knew enough about the situation to know like the carbon related to Portland scent production is an ingredient in concrete. And Portland cement, for people who haven't heard our interviews on cement, is the most common type of cement used around the world.

9:36Correct. Yeah, that's exactly right. And so it's an ingredient in almost every concrete used in the world. And so I knew that was probably problematic. So that's in the negative column. But in the positive column, you have almost certainly a more energy efficient house, almost certainly a more resilient house, almost certainly a more fireproof, moldproof, waterproof house, which are all sort of positives in the sustainability column. And so when you sort of did the whole accounting, sort of the life cycle accounting, there was a good argument to be made then and now that a house made of like more resilient, energy efficient materials on a life cycle actually would produce less carbon than one that was not.

10:13Yeah. I mean, I remember back in early 2000, maybe late 90s, I was the Berlin correspondent for NPR at the time. And they had just built the new German chancellor's residence. And it was entirely built out of concrete in Berlin. It was really controversial at the time. But the argument then was this is actually the most efficient building material. I remember going into that and, you know, it was very cool in the summer and it was quite nice and warm in the winter. It was really interesting. And so it makes sense to me that when you account for the efficiency of concrete as a, you know, once you're actually using a home, then that carbon sort of footprint is reduced essentially.

10:59Yeah. And then if you replace like that number, that four to 8 % of global CO2 emissions being related to like cement production used in concrete, if you replace concrete with anything, that number goes up. If you try to replace it with plastic, if you try to replace it with steel, think about where you use concrete. Like either we have to like go backwards as a civilization, which doesn't seem like the right recipe. Or if you replace that with anything, we're going, we're going to get worse. And so the way forward, it felt like, was to innovate around concrete and cement production. That felt like the way forward, rather than going backwards or accepting an increase in carbon.

11:37I want to just kind of ask you about materials in homes, because most of us listening have drywall in our homes. It's like you have a wood frame house, and they need to be insulated, and then the drywall is a form of insulation. But also it's very useful because you can nail things into it. You can tear it out. You can put it back in. You can put holes in it. I owned a home a few years ago. We had flooding from one of these atmospheric rivers in California. And, you know, 14 inches of drywall had to be cut out of the entire bottom floor of my house. And, you know, it's a pain. But you also, from what I read, have had some experiences with hurricanes.

12:17I think your childhood home was damaged by a hurricane. And that was really devastating. Exactly. That's true. I'm glad you picked up on that detail. So yeah, growing up on the Gulf Coast of Texas, my parents' home and my whole town, like 95 % of the town was like substantially damaged in that hurricane. This Hurricane Ike, I think, right? Correct. And we, you know, everyone in town had to tear out all of the interiors of their entire home, the floors, the drywall. It was like very emotionally devastating and like exhausting, disgusting work. And then I watched us put it right back together with the same materials that we had just seen in a very painful way are not fit to purpose for this environment.

13:05Drywall. Right. All these sort of unresilient materials are materials that are not suitable for almost any climate. Like if I offered you a million dollar prize, or the whole audience listening to this show, a million dollar prize to come up with a building material that could actually pass building code that was more cheaply and poorly made than drywall, nobody would win the contest. It's literally the worst building material we have been able to invent. We're going to take a quick break, but when we come back, Jason makes his concrete printing idea a reality with the help of some sleepless nights and maxed out credit cards.

13:43Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This Lab.

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17:27Welcome back to How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2017, and Jason, along with his wife and kids, are working on nights and weekends to build a 3D printer that can make homes out of concrete. And they're doing this as a side project while Jason is running his building supply company, Treehouse. And then an opportunity comes along. And then eventually a customer emerges who has seen what we've done at Treehouse and says, if you guys could actually 3D print a house, we would have a project for you. But you have to prove that you could do it. And that customer is a really innovative housing nonprofit called New Story.

18:09They came out of San Francisco. They went to sort of the famous Y Combinator program. And the two co-founders found out about what we were doing and said, we agree that we need to innovate new ways to deliver affordable housing. And we're willing to take some risks. We were sort of founded as like a risk taking nonprofit. And if you guys can actually print a house, then we have a project for you in Mexico. And so then the game is on. Right. And now it's like suddenly I, myself, Evan, Alex. We then very quickly start spending a lot of money. I think I maxed out three credit cards. Huh. Okay, so you're spending money like crazy, money you don't really have, to build this prototype of a 3D printed home made almost entirely from concrete.

18:57And how big was this home going to be? In the neighborhood of 500 square feet was the initial target. So like a large hotel room, basically. Yeah, like a studio home or like an accessory dwelling unit sort of scale thing. Yep. And we hired some engineering consultancies to help us fine-tune a few things. We found a buddy who owned some land that would let us do the print. And we self-funded the original printer called the Vulcan One. And we self-funded the construction of this house. All right. So you've got – you start to really work on this printer and you have this – all these friends and you call on a bunch of favors to design a house and you start working on this thing.

19:46But now let's talk about concrete, right? I mean everyone's seen a cement truck and the concrete comes out and it's poured in foundation and there's people with these large tools that are smoothing it out and stuff. How do you make it so it's like soft serve ice cream and it's, you know, and it and it works exactly as you need to work? I mean, was it a matter of just changing the proportion of ingredients or adding additives to make it work? Like because you're essentially creating a new kind of concrete is what you what you had to do. Correct. Yeah. Yeah, so this exact problem, the sort of bundle of problems around the material science of concrete and concrete behavior have been like the most bewitching and challenging.

20:31Because it's what's called, what the fancy people call a non-Newtonian fluid, which means its properties change based on the kind of pressures it's under. So like typical concretes, if you tried to 3D print with them, you'd have a puddle instead of a house because it would flow right out. But then they have these quick curing concretes that if you tried to print with those, your whole machine would turn into a brick. Like it wouldn't even. Right. It would harden inside. Yeah. Correct. And so getting material that will flow through your system and then harden rather quickly with enough precision that you can install doors and windows into it at the end was and is like a very challenging set of problems.

21:10Yeah, because I'm thinking like there's so many variables that concrete can harden in the tubes of the printer. Oh, and boy has it. That's it. Yeah, like been there, done that. Every problem you can have with concrete we have had, and to this day our highest concentration of PhDs at ICON is in the material science department. I mean it's like proper engineering and scientific breakthroughs, right, to get concrete to behave this way. So how did you come up with the material that could build this prototype house? We had some smart friends and advisors and like we were just doing just good enough, right?

21:48Like material we used then passed every single test that the city of Austin and every permitting authority and the structural engineers threw at us. But it's not the material we use today. So we've continued to improve. So we got it good enough. But you wouldn't have known that for sure at the start of the project, right? I mean, it was, as a matter of fact, we got halfway through the house and some of it, we were buying sort of the concrete as a dry mix, like a dry powder. And it was dewy in the mornings and the bags were sitting out there on the job site and it ruined a bunch of the bags of the concrete.

22:17And then we like last minute had to order more concrete because we had already announced that we were going to be unveiling something special at South by. So the clock is running. and so I went away we were out of money all my credit cards so I called my wife and said Jenny I think we are going to finish this house but I actually have to go get another credit card and I'm going to immediately max it out and she did not bat an eye she was like this is so important Jason like let's go like we're in this together I mean her whole energy and enthusiasm was like of course dummy like that's why we're married and so we got one more credit card immediately maxed it out on a concrete order and finished printing the house like 48 hours before we unveiled it at South by Southwest.

23:03Wow. All right. So you get this, you make it in time to unveil your company and your business at South by Southwest and you've got this house out. Meantime, what happens to Treehouse? What happens to the job there? Yeah. So actually the chairman of the board of Treehouse came to the unveiling of the house. His name is Garrett Boone. He was one of the founders of the Container Store. And he was like very proud and happy. And it was clear that all of a sudden, like I had a decision to make. Everything from let Icon go its happy way, let Trails go its happy way, try to be the CEO and president of both.

23:39So had some long prayers and walks and talks with my wife. And we decided that we felt like with the lives we've been given, like the most impactful thing we could do would be to pursue, continue to pursue this like construction automation, the sort of the path that Icon had laid out for us. And so I resigned at Treehouse with gratefulness and thanks. And they brought on another CEO to run that company. And I went full time at Icon. Full time. So now you've got this house and it was a big splash. I think at the time, the coverage of it said it was built, it was printed in a day. It cost for$4 ,000.

24:22It wasn't entirely correct. I mean, it took a little bit longer than just a day to make. Yeah, that's exactly correct. Probably the accurate way to say, like I had it printed perfectly, it could have printed in 24 hours. That got lost in all the headlines. Right. But it did not account for like the windows and the walls and all that new. Actually, I learned about that was a lesson that enforced its own penalty. for the next several years. We got like nonstop calls of people trying to order$4 ,000 houses. $4 ,000 homes, yeah. And it was like, by God, I am going to speak much more clearly in the future.

24:59But at the time, you have to understand also, like we hadn't slept in days. We didn't even know if it would work until 48 hours before. All of a sudden we won the South by Southwest Startup Showcase. There were like press and people crawling all over and like sticking microphones in my face and asking questions. And they're like, how much did it cost to print? And I just I didn't have the presence of mind or the thoughtfulness. But still, it cost I mean, even if it cost$10 ,000, it was a it was a remarkable achievement. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. It was a remarkable achievement. And it became the basis that we were then able to raise money and start a real company.