If knowledge if power, I need all the information I can get. So I have signed up for the course. The courses are to be run by Steve Allin the author of 'Building with Hemp' and I hope that his experience with hemp building will help me get a better idea of the window and door detailing for my build.
Since I first found out that Kevin McCloud's HAB company were building some hemp houses in Swindon UK, I have been keenly following the media reports on the internet. So it was with great joy that I started watching on the internet, as it has not yet screened on Australian TV, the first part of the Grand Designs episode entitled "The Great British Property Scandal" that follows Kevin's building journey. To my disappointment the episode did not feature much about the Hemcrete or the method of its use. There were some nice scenes of harvesting hemp, but in the construction section the episode featured labourers on site complaining why they couldn't have just used "normal" building methods. It goes to show that there is a lot more work to be done educating the building industry and the public about more environmentally responsible building practices and materials.
'The Triange' housing development at Swindon constructed using Hemcrete walls.
For a historical reference to the use of hemp in construction, while reading "Japanese Homes and their Surroundings" by Edward S Morse, published in 1885, I came across this passage "In the province of Mikawa I saw an iron-gray plaster, in which had been mixed the short fibres of finely-chopped hemp, the fibres glistening in the plaster; the effect was odd and striking."
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