Houses Made from Hemp

Hemcrete offers low-carbon promise for the next wave of green building.

June 2, 2009 at 1:43PM by Brian Clark Howard | comment

We've heard of houses made from reclaimed missile silos, dry docked boats, airplanes and even recycled bottles. But hemp? According to the Telegraph some enterprising Brits are doing exactly that with a material called Hemcrete.

A prototype three-bedroom house, funded by a grant from the British Department for Energy and Climate Change, is going on display, part of the UK government's green building push. Boosters say the technique is easily scalable, and hope a wider rollout will soon be possible.

The house is made of Hemcrete, a mix of hemp and lime that's not unlike papercrete. Hemcrete requires half the energy of a traditional brick house. Hemp is a renewable resource that is typically grown without pesticides and with low inputs of water and labor. It also can be grown between cycles of harvesting wheat. Hemp takes up carbon dioxide as it grows, and the builders estimate each square meter of wall removes 242.5 pounds of the gas from the atmosphere.

The hemp house is reportedly cheaper than conventional construction techniques, and the utility bills are expected to be very low. Read more from the Telegraph.

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