Hemp integral in new Australian eco village

The project manager of Western Australia’s first eco-village, partly built with hemp, believes the finished product will add weight to the growing push for it to be widely used in the construction industry.

Tendering contracts are out for the construction of 12 dwellings, due to be built in the WA south coast town of Denmark, about four and half hours from Perth.

The inner part of a hemp plant that will be used for the project.
Project manager Paul Llewellyn said a key feature would be the combination of hemp hurd, the innards of the plant’s stem, and lime, which is used to render the traditional timber frames.

“The two combine to form a lightweight masonry product, which is very thermally efficient, breathes and has lots of acoustic properties,” Mr Llewellyn said.

“It provides a wall — which is much more thermally efficient than a double brick wall and is equal in effect to the thermal efficiency of a very wall insulated timber wall — but this wall breathes, which regulates the humidity in the house.”

Mr Llewellyn said though similar houses had been built in other parts of Australia, the Denmark project was the first of its kind for WA.

“The houses themselves will be small, but the common space around the community will be large,” he said.

“Our primary drive has been to create houses that are comfy, easy to live in and cost little to run because they are energy efficient.”

From kitty litter to the job site

Mr Llewellyn also said hemp hurd had a high silica content, which repelled white ants, and when combined with lime the product was extremely fire proof.

“You could put a blow torch on it and it simply will not burn,” Mr Llewellyn said.

“In that way, it could be viewed as a breakthrough in building construction in our fire-prone areas.”

Commercially referred to as hempcrete the product is commonly used throughout Europe and was the result of hemp manufactures looking to find a use for the “mountains” of hemp hurd leftovers.

“It actually makes a fantastic kitty litter, but there is only so much use for kitty litter,” Mr Llewellyn said.

“So it was eventually combined with lime to make this amazing technology.”

source: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-02-25/denmark-hemp-village/7199776