From the latimes.com:
Woody Harrelson championed the environmental benefits of hemp. Giorgio Armani and Calvin Klein incorporated it into their collections. Now a company promoting hemp as the eco-building material of the moment said it wants to build California’s first hemp house.
Hemp Technologies said it wants to use hemp-based materials to construct a 500-square-foot structure at the ruins of Knapp’s Castle near Santa Barbara. The castle, completed in 1920, was built for Union Carbide founder George Owen Knapp but destroyed by wildfire in 1940. Since then, all that has remained on the property are the sandstone blocks outlining the once-grand estate.
The principal material for the project is Hempcrete, made of the woody internal stem of the Cannabis sativa plant, which is processed into chips and mixed with a lime-based binder. That concoction is then sprayed on, poured into slabs or formed into blocks like concrete to create the shell of a building. Interior surfaces are plastered, and exterior surfaces are stuccoed.
“The walls are to be framed and earthquake-braced internally with lumber,” said Greg Flavall, Hemp Technologies’ co-founder, who added that “hemp is very close in cellulosic value to wood.” The material helps to keep structures warm in winter and cool in summer, he said.
Other advantages, advocates have said, beyond the fact that the plant can be grown with little water and few pesticides: Hemp is resistant to fire damage and termites. Although air does not pass through the walls, moisture naturally dries out, and mold or dry rot are not problems. David Madera, who co-founded Asheville, N.C.-based Hemp Technologies with Flavall, credited the walls’ lime content, which needs carbon dioxide to harden.
The lime will pull carbon dioxide from the environment after the home is built “because the lime wants to go back to being a rock,” Madera said. “That means the wall is going to get harder and harder over time.”
Flavall said the Knapp’s Castle structure “will lock in about 12 tons of carbon dioxide that would otherwise have escaped into the atmosphere when the hemp cellulose decays in the field.”
That is, if the structure is completed. A Santa Barbara County official said a project has been submitted for planning approval but still needs to pass most stages of the permitting process. A house, outbuilding or any other structure would have to be deemed appropriate for the site, and any unconventional materials would have to be declared safe.
Madera, who declined to disclose the identity of his firm’s California client, said Hemp Technologies has consulted on three Hempcrete houses in North Carolina, where the material was treated as an alternative form of insulation.
Although hemp contains only trace elements of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, hemp is still derived from a cannabis plant. State and federal laws do not make a distinction between varieties of cannabis used for clothing or building materials and varieties used for more psychoactive purposes, so producing hemp is prohibited. Importing hemp, however, is legal, and various companies are pushing forward with hemp building products too.
Hemp Traders in L.A. distributes Hemp Board, a medium-density fiberboard (MDF) made from the same woody material that goes into Hempcrete. Hemp Board President Lawrence Serbin said his MDF is a sustainable alternative for doors, cabinets and shelves.
Spanish architect Monika Brümmer has developed Cannabric and Cannapanel, which, as the names suggest, are cannabis-based building blocks and wall panels. She has completed several residential projects in her country, where the products met construction standards.
it slices…it dices…..
Seriously, I don’t have anything against people who promote hemp based products. But articles like these leave me skeptical because they make hemp just sound so damn magical.
when you get munchies you can eat your walls?
If it catches on fire, does everyone run towards instead of away from it?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZbYsMsMW4Q&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Seem extremely labor intensive after looking at the construction process. I have a feeling the local HD will not be carrying hempcrete for some time to come…
Smoke ’em if you got ’em!
The truth of the matter is that the French have been building with hempcrete for over 35 years as an fuel saver, and now its coming out that it is a chemical free, highly insulative material. That means no more sick building syndrome from even many of the “green” mediums like recylced fly-ash. And no, you can hold a torch to it and it won’t light, so therefore lower insurance bills. Too bad people need so much catching up to reality, this end of the cannabis strain can no more get you high than eating poppy seeds on a bagel for its opiates. IN fact if you smoke this type of .03% tHC you will get a wicked headache. The USA is easilly more than a decade behind international progress using hemp as a building material, as a material that creates bio-plastics, and a food with the most protein rich seeds available to humans. Here in Vermont we are going to pull the US policy out of the stale rut it is in. Look for our Hemp policy statement published on Earth Day in VT in the Rutland Herald. You can see that statement now by going to (www) hempfullygreen .(com) or (www) emilypeyton (.org)
It is HIGH time Americans learned about industrial hemp, its history,a dn the difference between it and MJ. Just as you wouldn’t take a chihuahua and expect it to pull you across the arctic, but it would amuse you, the cannabis strain of industrial hemp with .03% THC ( pot has 8%-24% thc) is like the rugged sled dog that can pull you in a sled in the freezing cold across the arctic, the Marijuana of cannabis 8- 24 % THC can sit in your lap and make you giggle.
Canada is growing it, England is growing it, and producing many products. Look up Ford’s Hemp car on you tube, and then begin a marvelous journey !
Emily
Labor intensive, eg work? Industrial hemp will reduce our pollution, create a manufacturing base, and put people back to work. We don’t need it ? What are you smoking?
Oh and did I mention its deep root system restores the top soil, of which the world has lost over 50%, which is where all that excess carbon USED to be sequestered. IN other words, the US must get with industrial hemp. It takes 5 acres of the hemp shiv that grows in 14 weeks to build a 3000 square foot house, and what you end up with is a home that uses 75% less fuel, chemical free, stands for hundreds of years, and removes more pollutants than it creates. Who is afraid of the work to bring it back to the US ? Line up on your couches and watch us move.