Source: gm5-ncwebvarnish.news
A clutch of people cheered a few weeks ago as a crane lifted and human hands guided the last of the 16 prefabricated panels into place on a tiny house being built in the Living Well Community.
It was a special occasion for Marty Clemons, who will live in the house on a little street called Infinite Way off N.C. 22. Several of her future neighbors were on hand to share in her excitement. They had walked a short distance for a front row seat.
The construction was significant enough that several folks flew south from Chicago to watch, too.
Clemons’ future home is the first hemp house ever built in North America using hempcrete panels.
Super insulation
The first house made primarily of hemp in the United States was raised in Asheville in 2010. A mixture of industrial hemp shives (the woody core of the plant), lime and water — which creates a lightweight insulating material called hempcrete — was mixed on site and placed in the walls. Since then, many other hemp houses have been built across the nation employing the same building technique.
The 12-inch thick panels for Clemons’ house vary in size from 18 inches to 8 feet wide and 10 feet to 13.5 feet tall. The panels, with the hempcrete preinstalled inside wood frames, were crafted in Illinois by a company called American Lime Technology.
Five people representing the company — including three carpenters who built the panels — traveled to Randolph County to see the panels erected.
Watching the construction in Franklinville, company founder Mario Machnicki explained that when mixed on a job site, the industrial hemp, lime and water mixture has to dry, which can take weeks or months, depending on the weather. Factory-made panels can be shipped anywhere and quickly put together in any season.
The panels that form the exterior walls of Clemons’ 500-square-foot house were secured in place in just hours.
“This system has been proven in Europe,” Machnicki said, “especially the UK (United Kingdom).”
Clemons’ home is the prototype for what the company sees as a future building model, according to Tai Olson, the company’s director of operations. Ideally, he noted, a standard house design would be less complex than Clemons’ home. It would be constructed of panels that are all the same size. That would make storing, shipping and assembling the panels simpler and cheaper.
More properties
Hempcrete is energy-efficient and toxin-free. It weighs a fraction of what concrete does; walls using hempcrete are extremely airtight; and the material is carbon-negative. Hemp plants pull carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as they grow; hemp houses sequestrate the carbon as lime in the hempcrete calcifies.
Its durability is documented. According to the American Lime website, hempcrete was discovered in a bridge abutment built in France in the sixth century. That construction has survived 14 centuries, the website notes, so people expect hempcrete buildings will have a long life, measured in centuries. Hempcrete buildings ten stories high have been built in Europe.
Renewable resource
Some people confuse hemp and marijuana. Hemp has a much higher concentration of cannabidiol, which is an essential oil, like lavender or peppermint. Cannabidiol, or CBD, the most used and talked about cannabinoid, is known to have anti-inflammatory, anti-anxiety and anti-seizure properties. Marijuana is higher in tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, a psychoactive chemical.
For years, licensed growers have grown industrial hemp legally in Europe, the UK and Canada. Now, North Carolina growers and farmers in a few other U.S. states can grow it, too.
The crop was outlawed in the United States in 1937, but the government briefly reversed course, asking farmers to grow hemp for the war effort. Some states, including North Carolina, have revisited the prohibition in recent years.
Asheboro attorney Bob Crumley founded the N.C. Industrial Hemp Association (ncindhemp.org) to lobby to change the law in the Tar Heel state. A little more than two years ago, state legislators authorized an industrial hemp pilot program and established the Industrial Hemp Commission (IHC) to create rules and regulations to be followed by pilot program participants.
In September, the first industrial hemp crop in 80 years was harvested in Randolph County — on Waylon Saunders’ farm west of Asheboro. Long before he sowed seed, Saunders was high on the crop’s potential. He explained in an interview last year that every part of the hemp plant has a potential commercial use: The roots, the stalk, the leaves, the seed. There is no waste.
Saunders is also the director of farm operations for Founder’s Hemp, an Asheboro-based company which will process hemp plants and seeds into food and oil at a facility on Dorsett Avenue.
Founder’s Hemp will buy the seed he and other farmers grow, Saunders explained. The challenge would be finding markets for the other parts of the plant.
The building industry can be one of those markets.
Cleaner, healthier
Clemons moved to North Carolina a few years ago. In exploring sustainable living options, she learned about construction applications of industrial hemp. Eventually, she crossed paths with Bob Crumley.
Now she is president of the N.C. Industrial Hemp Association, a trade organization working to build a hemp industry in the state — creating jobs that do not yet exist.
She also is part of a new way of living at the Living Well Community under development on 124 acres alongside the Deep River in Franklinville. The vision statement for the Living Well Community is to “(c)reate a diverse community with the shared values of sustainability, wellness and honoring the sacred.”
“It’s like a laboratory for sustainable living, this whole community,” she said.
Clemons and her neighbors aim to use fewer resources, to be better stewards of the land, and building a hemp house fits those ideals.
“One of my great passions is disrupting fossil fuels,” she said. “This will be living in a really pristine air quality environment. The goal is that it’s cleaner and healthier to live in for the person — and it’s healthier for the environment.”
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