Residents share look inside world's largest 3D-printed neighborhood: 'I feel safer in this house than any house I've ever lived in'

An experimental community in Texas is getting rave reviews from a retired homeowner who first learned about the idea from her tech enthusiast son.

Construction company Lennar teamed up with 3D-printing firm Icon to build the world's largest 3D-printed neighborhood in Georgetown, a suburb of Austin. According to CNBC, it took roughly two years to build 100 homes, making the process much faster than traditional construction.

When residents started moving in, retiree Holly Feekings and her husband were among them. Feekings told CNBC during a tour of her home that she didn't regret the decision for a moment.

"It's very peaceful to live here," she said. "Very quiet. We have a major road right out back, and we don't hear it. It's the concrete and the insulated windows."

The cement and concrete industry accounts for around 8% of global carbon pollution, with the heat-trapping gas responsible for approximately 80% of the "total heating influence" caused by humans, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Global Monitoring Laboratory.

Because of the adverse effects of rising global temperatures, including more intense extreme weather and economic devastation, researchers are developing more sustainable types of concrete. Yet 3D printing is also proving to be a more eco-friendly mode of building, reducing pollution by shortening construction times and minimizing the need to ship materials.

Feekings told CNBC that her 3D-printed home also came with one particularly enticing feature: energy efficiency, which translated to significant savings on her utility bills.

Whereas the average Georgetown home paid nearly $131 for electricity during the first month of the year, Feekings said she spent only $26. Her home can also handle the summer heat.

"You do have to run your air on hot days, of course," she said. "But it'll hold its temperature. You don't have to check the thermostat, and everything's automatic."

Another perk of the home is that it has no studs, which left Feekings and her husband free to decorate their beautifully textured walls however they pleased. "You can hang pictures and everything anywhere you want," she said of the aesthetic appeal. "It's been wonderful."

Would you trust a home built by a 3D-printing robot? For sure 👍 Only if it was cheaper 💸 Only if it was faster 🦾 No way 👎 Click your choice to see results and speak your mind.

However, that doesn't mean the home performs poorly where it matters most. The sturdy construction technique makes it more resilient to extreme weather events.

"I feel safer in this house than any house I've ever lived in because it's so well built," Feekings told CNBC. "It's not going to burn down."

Lennar and Icon are now planning a bigger 3D-printed community seven miles away. They say the homes there will be available at a more affordable price point than in the Georgetown neighborhood, where they start at nearly $400,000 (comparable to other homes in the area).

"We've internally had a whole redesign of our wall system to be even faster, even more affordable, and to even better integrate with the rest of the trades that have to work around what we do," Icon co-founder and CEO Jason Ballard told CNBC, also expressing excitement for a new generation of printers that could further improve 3D construction.

Join our free newsletter for easy tips to save more and waste less, and don't miss this cool list of easy ways to help yourself while helping the planet.