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Combine Hemp & Timber
Frame - Grow Your Own House! |
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by Henry O'D. Thompson |
Wednesday, 01
December 2004 |
The combined use of hemp and timber
frame is the ultimate in true sustainable eco friendly
construction; yes you can grow your own house.
By
using hemp and timber frame construction these buildings have
a potential for zero CO2 emissions. The proposed carbon tax
may have been temporally shelved but will ultimately have to
be introduced if we are to live up to our Kyoto
agreements.This will affect all Irish builders in the future.
This carbon tax will hit many building components suppliers
hard as there will be a tax on the carbon dioxide emissions
produced by such materials. A Hemp House may have net zero
emissions and so contribute to keeping costs down. The carbon
tax could be likened to when the unleaded petrol first came;
at first it wasn’t popular but it eventually became more
sensible to use the unleaded and ultimately it may be the only
option.
In France they have been building with hemp for
15 years with hundreds of homes completed. The OldBuilders are
pioneering hemp technology building here to provide houses
that will be warm, breathable and eco-friendly. Normal
concrete block or standard airtight timber frame buildings
often aren’t breathable and so need ventilation and heat
exchangers. They usually contain many synthetic materials many
of which may be harmful to our environment in production or
harmful in the environment in which we live, IE our
house.
The hemp building is a solid wall construction
that beats most conventional insulation methods because of its
thermal mass. This means the hemp houses are cool in the
summer and warm in the winter and are not prone to
condensation and mildew buildups, very important as we come to
realize the importance of indoor air quality on our health and
in particularly the health of our children with the staggering
growth in child allergies.
The OldBuilders Company is
primarily a specialist in the restoration and conservation of
old and historic buildings and it was in our pursuit of green
and environmentally friendly techniques for conservation that
we learned that hemp mixed with water and hydraulic lime was
ideal for insulating and old stone buildings. It’s an
extremely breathable vapour permeable material, a terrific
alternative. Studies have shown that 35% of dry lined
buildings after 10 years have toxic moulds growing behind the
walls.
Over a number of years and experiences I became
fascinated with all things relating to hemp and subsequently
the OldBuilders Company in cooperation with Terry McGrogan and
in consultation with Tom Wooley professor of green building at
Queens University, built the first hemp house in Ireland for
client Marcus McCabe, a well-known environmentalist in Clones,
Co. Monaghan. Marcus produces read bed sewage treatment
systems. This building is now being used as his
office.
The OldBuilders are now completing the second
and third hemp buildings in Dunlavin, Co. Wicklow. The hemp
house in Dunlavin will be used as a workshop and the adjoining
hemp building will be a sunroom.
Design We design the hemp houses
to be as conventional looking as possible, the results are
very similar to any masonry built modern building. The
structure of the buildings is built similar to a standard
timber-frame house although with some significant framing
differences. The timber is then encased entirely by the hemp
lime mix which solidifies to a masonry type structure, it’s
solid not a cavity wall.
Experiment An interesting
experiment has been undertaken in Sussex in England where two
houses were built alongside each other, one made from hemp the
other from conventional concrete block. A thermal picture was
taken of both houses at night and the difference was
staggering. The conventional house was glowing because it was
losing so much heat. The study found that the hemp house was
on average two degrees warmer with the same energy input. That
could translate into heat savings of between 15% and
20%.
In Ireland, the number of hemp advocates is
growing daily and it is becoming very likely that the
cultivation of hemp won’t be just a pipe dream. At the moment
the only drawback to hemp is that it is more expensive than
concrete but if it were to be grown in bulk in Ireland that
problem would very quickly sort itself out.
Henry O’D. Thompson, OldBuilders
Company.
http://www.oldbuilders.com/
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