Exploring How This Plant Could Replace Concrete

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I grew the first hemp fiber trials in California in 2021. We grew 26' tall plants and yielded >8T an acre in dry stalk biomass. The plant and its potential is insane. My partners on the project have converted a cotton gin to process hemp. the process to watch is adding hemp and lime to spray-in insulation machines. It's a complete game changer.

I'm well-retired now, but even as a teenager, it was often discussed by adults around me , how Dupont was behind the legislation banning Hemp. As the patent-holders of artificial fibers, their only real competition was Hemp, which they could never compete with or replace, due to its world-wide use . And the rest, as they say, is History . It is amazing how greedy influential people , can alter the course of history .

I started using hempcrete about 10 years ago, the comfort it brought to the house is amazing, it's easy to mix with a concrete mixer once you know how to mix it.

I now have a list of things to get: A large plot of land in the middle of nowhere A truckload of mycelium making fungi samples A really tall, netted area for growth bamboo, And a hemp fiber farm. Build all the things

A wheat farmer near my grandfather's farm use the wheat straw from his own fields to build his new house. To prevent insects from living in the straw he built a hopper that sat above the feedshoot of his baler that held borax powder and sprinkled a light dusting of borax on the straw as it come into the baler. This diffused the borax throughout the bale. It not only eliminated any possible insect issue, but borax is a natural fire retardant. When he had completed his house I went over with my Dad (who was an architect and main instigator of the visit) and grandfather to take a look. It was a very normal looking house built up on a slight mound (to make sure water ran away from the house and never had a chance to pond next to the walls) and had an extra thick insulated concrete slab (which was not covered inside, but instead was just stained and polished, and which had water pipes running through it for heating in the cold Oklahoma winters). The only real give away was that the walls were about 2 1/2 to 3 feet thick. I remember the day we visited was a standard hot Oklahoma summer day, yet the inside of the house was cool without the air conditioner running. I can remember my grandfather asking about this since in his older farm house the AC ran all the time. The answer was that they open up the house in the evening and night and get everything inside the house cool, especially the thick floor slab. Then in the morning they close the windows and drew the curtains to limit the heat gain. The farmer pointed out the circular duct in one corner of the room that ran from floor to ceiling with a fan. During the day the fan would pull warm air from the ceiling and blow it across the concrete floor. With the large amount of thermal mass in the floor the house didn't start to get overly warm until around sunset when they opened the windows back up and turn on the whole house fan in the ceiling that drew air through the house. And if the night was still too warm or humid, they would just run their relatively tiny AC unit at night when the temperature difference was lower and it took less energy to cool the house down. BTW, I am an engineer, and some of the above is me backfilling technical details that I understand now. But when we visited I was in high school and already knew I was going to be an engineer, so I actually did understand a lot of what the farmer (who was also an engineer who came back to take over his own father's farm) was saying. And my Dad was so impressed that he did something similar (at least from a thermal mass point of view) when he built his new house in Arizona. Instead of straw he used concrete block with every cell poured full of concrete to create the huge amount of thermal mass and then put 6 inch thick aircrete panels on the outside to insulate it. Nights in Arizona are often too hot to fling the windows open, but the amount of power required to run the AC was much lower at night and with time of day pricing, much much cheaper as well. Well thanks for the chance to remanence.

Given hemp blocks porous and density properties it should also be a great soundproofing material resulting in a more pleasant living environment within a busy/loud community.

T-shirts make up about 95% of the shirts I've ever owned. They last anywhere between 1-4 years depending on the quality and how often I wear them. I bought one made of hemp in the early 90s and had it for at least 20 years. It didn't deteriorate, or fade, nearly as fast from washing like ones made of other materials.

As always, very interesting and informative . The fact that hemp is basically a weed and can grow anywhere that normal crops fail will be a huge factor in this,product.

Hempcrete is "mold resistant" in that it doesn't mold as much as papercrete, but it still molds really easily. I went to college in the desert southwest where there was a lot of interest in hempcrete and everything I saw built with it soaked up water during the monsoon season and sat wet and moldy all winter. It can't be in contact with the ground, or in contact with concrete that is in contact with the ground, and it needs a roof over it that is water tight and has broad overhangs.

When I was in India many years ago, they mixed chopped up hemp when making "low cement powder" blocks. I saw hemp plants 4 meters tall with a single 5 kg seed cola at the top, which they fed to their livestock. As hardy as bamboo and as pliable as flax.

It's crazy how unbelievably versatile hemp is.. It's sadly really difficult to produce hemp products as most farmers are hesitant to farm it, at least where I live. You hear of new uses for it every other year, wondering when people will start to increase production.

I saw Hempcrete at the PA farm show about 15 years ago. I think they had a special license for it or something but it was really cool to see back then. Glad to see it being talked about again.

We've insulated the outside of our 1950s brick house with hempcrete. Our floors are also insulted with 20cm thick blocks and the moisture level in the house has dropped significantly. The combination of that and the loam plaster have created a really healthy climate inside the house. Great to see you cover this in your usual balanced way.

Matt - a video covering the replacement of cotton and wood by hemp fider would be very welcome.

A complete, unemotional explanation of the pros and cons of using hemp in construction. Enjoyed it very much.

I remember using this in a lot of my projects during uni back in 2009 and 10. My teachers laughed at me each time i used it and tried to persuade me to use more familiar materials.

Hemp can also be used to replace cotton and wood as a source for paper production. These are two major resource that put pressure on the ecosystem. I read that hemp hardly needs any fertilizer and uses a fraction of the water that cotton uses.

Interesting approach. Companies in Austria use hemp as insulation material for wood-frame houses, and have actually done so for quite a while. Nice to see that this is growing to other options.

Rooting for Hempire since 2015! It’s amazing how light hempcrete is - you can hold 3ft piece in your hands easily )