Construction
Hemp can expand your consciousness! In this case, your awareness of how pleasant and beneficial it can be to live or work in buildings constructed with hemp stone.
Botanists know for a fact that the hemp plant grows fifty times faster than wood.
Experts calculate that the biomass required for a detached house can grow on an area of one hectare within five months.
In addition, the plant grows at an altitude of up to 1,900 meters. It regenerates the soil and requires neither fertilizer nor pesticides.
This plant has helped many developers and architects to win recognized awards:
The "Case di Luce" won the Green Building Construction Award 2016.
The multi-storey residential and commercial buildings with an energy efficiency rating of almost zero were built as part of a sustainable urban regeneration project in Bisceglie (Apulia).
All varieties of the Cannabis sativa genus are used as industrial hemp.
In addition to the fibers, the seeds, leaves, flowers and shives (long-fibered sections of the stalks) of industrial hemp are also processed.
They are not only used for building materials such as insulating materials and lightweight panels, but also for textiles, hemp oil and hemp juice.
This means that around 97% of the hemp plant is processed.
Hemp is extremely tear-resistant, water-repellent and at the same time lightweight and also binds a lot of CO2.
Hemp pellets have the same calorific value as charcoal but, in contrast, do not contribute to the greenhouse effect.
All these properties make hemp a popular ecological building material.
The variety of hemp as a building material is so great that a complete list would go beyond the scope of this article. Therefore, here are some of the main products that have been used successfully for years:
Hemp insulation, hemp insulation mats, tamping wool, needle felt, sealing tape, hemp rammed earth (as insulation), hemp-clay sound insulation, hemp-clay bricks (can be used like bricks and Y-Tong). Hemp mats and tamping wool can be used as insulation for walls, roofs and floors. In roofs they are used as insulation between rafters and on roofs, in ceilings and walls as insulation between structural timbers.
Hemp is kind to the skin and can be processed with little dust. Clay-coated, compactable hemp shives are ideal for floor construction.
Hemp fleeces are used both as impact sound insulation and in industrial applications.
The tamping material is filled by hand into a previously created cavity. The good usability of hemp limestone is also noteworthy. The two materials are pressed into a stone using a cold air process.
The combination of the loose hemp shives with natural lime and minerals makes the material as hard as stone and resistant to external influences, so that the building can last for many generations.
There are already a number of manufacturers of hemp building blocks in Europe, in Germany as well as in Italy and Belgium.
The wood of the trunk, the last waste, is used for the building material.
The result is a natural cycle without waste (cradle to cradle).
The material has the ability to absorb four times its own weight in moisture within one minute and release it again in the same time.
Hemp blocks insulate even when wet. They regulate the humidity in the house, neutralize odours through ionization and clean through limescale deposits.
The result is clean indoor air.
Hemp as a building material is not only interesting for the construction of earthly buildings.
Lightweight panels made of hemp are preferred to those made of wood, especially for airplanes, because of the weight savings.
Another major area is paints, glazes and varnishes.
Hemp seed oil and processed hemp parts can provide paints that are superior to other building materials in terms of their properties and ecological factor.
