[Greenbuilding] Hemp or Hempcrete

[RT]

On Tue, 17 Sep 2013 21:07:52 -0400, Gennaro Brooks-Church - Eco Brooklyn
<info at ecobrooklyn.com> wrote:

> Can anyone suggest a source for hemp or hempcrete on the east coast?


If one were to take a hypertufa recipe (basically sphagnum peat with a
cement binder) and substitute lime for the Portland cement, the material
would have all of the properties of hempcrete.

(Just Google "hypertufa" if you don't know what it is and you'll get  
plenty of hits. You many also want to Google "tufa" to learn about natural  
stone from which hypertufa gets its name)

I suspect that one could take any number of natural fibres and do the
same. Bamboo comes to mind as being one.
(ie the US Army did extensive studies substituting bamboo for steel rebar
in concrete so it would be reasonable to think that if one ran bamboo
through a chipper and used it as the fibre admixture in place of the
illegal-in-the-US hemp, it'd do the job too.)

http://www.romanconcrete.com/docs/bamboo1966/BambooReinforcedConcreteFeb1966.htm

If one wants a store-bought natural fibre concrete substitute here in
North America, I think that one need not look any further than Durisol
products.

The same mineralised wood fibre material that is used to make the Durisol
ICFs is also used to make humongous panels that are erected as highway
sound barriers. No reason why they couldn't be used as infill panels in
the manner that hempcrete is used in buildings over in Yerp.['scuze me]

http://www.armtec.com/en-ca/Featured/Sound-Barrier-Walls.aspx

-- 
=== * ===
Rob Tom					AOD257
Kanata, Ontario, Canada

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