Re: Climate Change Prevention
by zetreque on January 30th, 2018, 3:33 pm
Very informative article. Thank you. I researched this the other day when posting above because I am hopefully very soon starting on my own building project. After my research I don't think I will be using hempcrete but haven't entirely ruled it out. It comes down to cost. As the article points out, even the seeds have to be imported. With time this product will get very cheap I think when farmers start growing it locally, but right now it's not entirely sustainable being shipped all over and it's more expensive going through all the building exemptions, labor and mixing.
Also as the article points out, it's not for structural. You are basically replacing the costs of standard insulation, drywall and siding with the cost of hempcrete which is much more labor intensive. California might be much more open to the industry after the last series of disastrous fires wiped out thousands of homes. I think even as non-environmentally friend as standard concrete is, concrete still looks good when you take into account it's being fireproof, thermal mass, soundproofing and strength. (so long as the next owner of the house doesn't just tear the thing down to build his or her own dream home which happens quite often.)
This article mentions the problems with being used close to ground level. I did not read that in my research and that adds additional problems. I'd like to consider this building material, but unfortunately I might be a little to early to the game. The article gave me a couple leads to look into. Thanks again.