I absolutely love the idea of hempcrete. I believe it is non-structural, though, and requires framing if it goes to any height - rather like a half-timbered building. I stayed iin a 450-year-old half-timbered house for a couple of weeks once, courtesy of the wonderful Landmark Trust. It was a very cold December, and the plastering had all shrunk away from the beams, leaving gaps of up to an inch through which the wind whistled, and through which we could see the black night sky. We froze! Is that a known issue with hempcrete?
This is one of those things that is so obvious when you see it that you wonder how you didn't see it before. That whole comparison of bricks to Stone makes so much sense. Especially the starkness of expending huge amounts of energy to DOWNCYCLE Stone to concrete. Truly bonkers! And I was never a fan of brick and you've just given me one more reason to hate it.
Traveling around Ireland and the UK, especially Scotland and Orkney, I have seen the historical range of uses of stone as building material, from the use of stones essentially as found for walls, roofs, and at Shara Brae for interior furnishings. By the time of the Roman occupation you have the use of worked stone from quarry to building site with skilled craftsmen shaping and fitting stones together, my missing piece is not recalling where the stonemasons ended up economically. Did they price themselves into the high end leaving room for cement workers to undercut them pricewise?
I absolutely love the idea of hempcrete. I believe it is non-structural, though, and requires framing if it goes to any height - rather like a half-timbered building. I stayed iin a 450-year-old half-timbered house for a couple of weeks once, courtesy of the wonderful Landmark Trust. It was a very cold December, and the plastering had all shrunk away from the beams, leaving gaps of up to an inch through which the wind whistled, and through which we could see the black night sky. We froze! Is that a known issue with hempcrete?
Definitely a lightbulb moment
This is one of those things that is so obvious when you see it that you wonder how you didn't see it before. That whole comparison of bricks to Stone makes so much sense. Especially the starkness of expending huge amounts of energy to DOWNCYCLE Stone to concrete. Truly bonkers! And I was never a fan of brick and you've just given me one more reason to hate it.
Traveling around Ireland and the UK, especially Scotland and Orkney, I have seen the historical range of uses of stone as building material, from the use of stones essentially as found for walls, roofs, and at Shara Brae for interior furnishings. By the time of the Roman occupation you have the use of worked stone from quarry to building site with skilled craftsmen shaping and fitting stones together, my missing piece is not recalling where the stonemasons ended up economically. Did they price themselves into the high end leaving room for cement workers to undercut them pricewise?