After Adam and Eve got ejected from the Garden of Eden, I wonder what kind of a dwelling they constructed to hang out in. A cave, a grass hut, a cozy teepee? And after the boys were born, did they all move to a bigger shanty in a nicer neighborhood? Or did they stay in their starter home and added on a couple of hammocks? Maybe a more convenient covered walkway to their luxury outdoor plumbing?

After the sons hit teenage their living arrangement must have gotten more complicated. They all had important work to do, you know. They had to start begatting the human race. Us!

For parents Adam and Eve, shacking up was a pretty simple affair. They didn’t know how to make fire at the time, so sharing all that body heat huddled in some mini-habitat can easily explain how Cain, and then later, little brother Abel, got begatted. But what, you may ask, ensued once those two got to be teenagers, and it was time for them to start begatting?

There were no girlfriends in sight, no dating hotline they could log onto. The only dolly running around – covered in her modest but stylish fig leaves – was their Mama. (Ahem.) You can see the problem here. And I don’t mean to hurt your feelings, but, yes, you are a product of incest.

Now, unless Adam had been eaten by dinosaurs by then, we have to wonder where these illicit affairs were consummated. Watching his lifelong mate doing the hanky-panky with their sons probably wasn’t very high on his bucket list. No, there had to be more than one hideaway residence occupied by then. Designed and fabricated by Cain & Abel Construction, LLC. Think of it as the official launch of the building construction business as we know it today. Sadly, as the predecessor of Jimmy Hoffa, Abel had to show the way by getting whacked, but that seems to be the price of progress in creating Better Homes and Gardens of Eden.

Speaking of which, I am planning to move to a new domicile myself in a few months. Well, not new exactly, but re-tooled and retrofitted to accommodate my son Matthew and me. We are getting ready to give my lucky son-in-law Curt the special privilege of having us move in on him and my daughter Susy. I like to think that sharing their home with in-laws has always been his life-long dream.

The construction company we engaged to do the whanging and banging to get the place in shape for its immigrating residents-to-be is K&B Masters, LLC. The father and son team – Dan and Daniel – certainly know their way around a power saw, and so far the work done has been a four-star success! They’re hearing lots of “Oohs and Aahs!” More about their progress soon.

Last week, Dan and Daniel finished pouring concrete for a ramp and sidewalks for Matthew’s wheelchair. It got me thinking. Skilled construction artisans must be looking ahead to the future with some trepidation. It’s time we all better head back to school, boys and girls, and get ourselves prepared for what may be the biggest construction breakthrough in history: the 3D printer.

Until now, the style of the 3D printed homes I’ve peeked in on have been a tad bizarre: igloo-shaped, or looking a bit like a hive. Not anymore though. In case you didn’t see the news last week, the first 3D printed residence has gone on the market in New York. Here’s the realtor’s website to describe it. You can take a tour of it here to see some more photos and the interior.

http://tours.squarefootphotography.com/1762379?a=1https://tours.squarefootphotography.com/public/vtour/display/1762379

In case the house is sold by the time you’re reading this, here’s a screenshot from the video tour. You can also see more on Zillow. It’s offered at $299,000 and has 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, 1400 Sq Ft and a 2.5 car detached garage.

What seems so spectacular to me is the way they’ve incorporated traditional construction with the 3D printing. Only the walls and foundation were printed; the roof, floors, doors, electrical, plumbing, etc. were cranked out with hammer and tong just like we’re used to, because the technology isn’t grown up enough for that yet. And the walls don’t emphasize the usual “sausage-roll” surface of the printers. Within the next ten years or so, lots of home building will be done like this, – and, soon, the cost is predicted to be less than half what we’re paying today.

A 3D printer can use any moldable material such as the concrete used for this house, and that may explain my intense interest in the 3D printed homes. Concrete supported much of my family in the midwest. My brother-in-law Tommy was a concrete contractor, as were all his brothers; and even his sons worked side-by-side with him doing the same work that the 3D printers are doing today. My relatives could be doing the same work soon, but instead of using their brute-force, intense, back-breaking manual labor, they would be programming and monitoring a huge robotic printer doing the same work in a fraction of the time, at half the cost.

Here’s a video on some of the nitty gritty of the printing process:

https://youtu.be/F-oRZPTW1E4

My niece Denise once described on Facebook a concrete backyard patio she had just completed by herself. She said it made her realize how satisfying her dad’s work must have been to him. Other women will be figuring that out too, and maybe more of them will be entering the building trades. Let’s face it: it probably doesn’t take upper body strength to wrangle a 3D printer. Just brains and imagination. And maybe a bossy attitude. Okay, also maybe a degree in architecture or engineering. And, to get started, possibly a whole lot of capital.

The reason all this technology developed so fast may be largely due to all the research that’s been funded in order to figure out how to crank out habitats on Mars without needing to transport traditional construction products. We can’t set up a colony on Mars till we know how to build the habitats. Instead of concrete, they’ll likely be using debris from the surface of the planet, and it looks like the structures are going to be the igloo or hive-shaped ones to better withstand the fierce wind and dust storms of Mars, and because – oh, well – the printers don’t know how to do roofs and bay windows yet.

Of course, Mars won’t be a dream home for anybody. Think about the most horrible living situation you can imagine and then multiply it by some far-out number, and that’s the kind of environment awaiting the hardy explorers who may be capable of surviving it. It’ll be like getting kicked out of Eden. It has to be done though. It’s our only current hope of establishing a launch site to allow the exploration of farther distant planets. Hopefully, one of them will be friendly to human life. Then if we mess up our planet Earth beyond hope, or blow up too much of it with nuclear wars, or get hit with a mighty asteroid, well, hey! Welcome to Planet Ziroxx!

And if only two of us can make it there, we can only hope that one will be a male and one a female. It would definitely be time for Equal Opportunity. Maybe their names will be “Adam” and “Eve”. For them, it’ll be a kind of rerun of getting thrown out of paradise, but, at least, they’ll be going into it with on-the-job experience.

Finally, in case you haven’t had enough yet, here’s a good 10 minute video describing 3D printing developments last year. (There’ll be some ads interspersed.)