Hempcrete 101 with Alex Sparrow and Tom Rossmassler
Ready to put your specification where your aspiration is?
Take a deep dive into the rich world of carbon-beneficial materials and help lead our industry in responsible design and construction solutions. Hempcrete is a bio-composite material created from the woody core of the hemp plant combined with a lime-based binder. Trusted around the world as a robust, high-performance sustainable building system, Hemp-lime entered the US market a decade ago and is poised to take the industry by storm. Learn the technical and performance characteristics, demystify how to specify and construct with this proven material, and join a growing community of radically responsible industry stewards.
Learning Objectives:
- Summarize the history of hemp and hempcrete, the regulatory barriers in the US that are slowly easing, and describe examples from pioneers in hemp building from Europe and the first projects in New England
- Identify sources for hemp and lime, and explain methods for installation of this alternative material, the state of research internationally versus in the US, and what considerations are necessary from a code standpoint to build
- Use Hempcrete as a monolithic solid-wall construction material for building carbon-beneficial envelopes as an alternative to current assemblies used in high performance buildings that are entangled multi-layered assemblies more heavily laden with embodied energy
- List low-cost material solutions to reduce toxins in the building and improve the healthfulness of a building