Can You Build a House With Hemp?
Sept. 8, 2015 - Growing industrial hemp was illegal in the United States after 1970 because the industrial plant and marijuana were considered to be the same, when in fact they are different varieties of
Cannabis. In recent years, some states have changed their laws, allowing farmers to start growing industrial hemp, which is used in everything from clothing to nutritional products to building materials. Oregon grower Cliff Thomason says growing and processing hemp was stymied because it was illegal, but now a knowledge base for best uses can grow, along with the plants. View a hemp home constructed using hempcrete, a building material that advocates claim is mold resistant, breathable, and eco-friendly.
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Hemp Homes Could Hit New High As Growing Cannabis Gets Legal"
JOY BECKERMAN MAHER, PRESIDENT, HEMP ACE INTERNATIONAL LLC:
Some of the most practical uses of industrial hemp in the modern day, of course, are the same as they ever were. Building materials, paper, textiles, seed oil, nutrition. Hempcrete, of all the fifty-thousand known products that we can make with industrial hemp, is my absolute favorite. It is a mold resistant, rot resistant, pest resistant, fire resistant, carbon negative building material.
CLIFF THOMASON, PRESIDENT, OREGON HEMP COMPANY:
The most difficult part of pioneering industrial hemp in Oregon is the lack of understanding. People still believe that hemp can get you high, when in fact, there is no psycho-active components to this. So it’s a matter of educating people, and we’re working on that. Hemp in the United States can be an incredibly viable commodity. Since the beginning of time, it’s the only plant that can feed you, house you, clothe you and heal you. It has hardy fiber. Strongest fibers found in nature. Every part of the plant can be used, you know, from the stalk, the leaves and the flowers and the seeds. And each one of those components can be used for thousand of different uses each. These plants will take usually three to four months. They’ll reach heights of eight or nine feet, and we’ll harvest them and we’ll separate out the fibers, and the flowers, the seeds and the rest of the vegetation to make different products.
PAM BOSCH, HOMEOWNER, HIGHLAND HEMP HOUSE:
I think in order to launch hempcrete building, to make it real, you have to have a model. So my vision is to take this house and retrofit it with hempcrete and demonstrate that it’s a viable building process. In fact, it’s everything that you want in a building. In a wall. It’s permeable, so it mediates the humidity in the room. But since the wall absorbs the humidity and the lime that you build with is a high pH, it doesn’t mold. So the wall will hold onto the humidity and disperse it inside or outside as it’s needed. Buildings consume 40 to 50 percent of the world’s energy, so if we could establish hempcrete building, it’s huge. And as you get more into the nature of hemp and it’s abundant properties, that becomes part of the imagination of what a hempcrete building can be.
CLIFF THOMASON:
The future of hemp is an opportunity for everyone. We’re going to find sustainable uses that we have never even thought were possible in taking advantage of a knowledge base that’s never been created because it’s been illegal. And I would hope to see, you know, five years from now, just growing in fields of green.
PAM BOSCH:
I think hemp has a lot of answers for nutrition, for energy saving, for building. The ideal future is that we have enough hemp growing on the planet in the hands of as many people as find use for it, because it has so much to give.
