Cob Blog

April 25, 2007

Hemcrete

Filed under: Uncategorized — admin @ 4:16 pm

Our building team has just built it’s first ‘paid for’ hemcrete wall. We had only done small testers so far, so this is our first proper one!!! It is for a firewall within an attic, perfect material for the job.

What an amazing material is all I can say. It is super easy to mix in a pan mixer, mixes in 3 – 5 minutes into a lightweight, mess free mixture. We transported it to site in the crates we normally transport our bags of lime in and then used a garden fork to dig it back out into rhino tubs.

In one hour, with one person filling the tubs and one person emptying and tamping down, we loaded 1200 kg of hemcrete into place within shuttering in a very awkward attic space. This equates to just over 2 cubic meters of dry hemcrete.

Other than using poured concrete within shutters I can’t think of a quicker method of construction. There is no back breaking or straining involved because it is so light, there’s no appreciable time spent clearing up afterwards, just a quick brush up.

We were converts before we started using it properly but now we will have to start preaching!!!

April 17, 2007

Spring!!

Filed under: Uncategorized — admin @ 9:43 am

Spring has finally sprung here in Devon, the birds are singing and the leaves are sprouting forth. Our newest son, now 3 months old, is no longer feeding every 5 minutes and we are beginning to get a fraction more sleep. However, the birds are now waking up our other son at the crack of dawn to compensate.

Our green credentials are slipping slightly at the moment due to the lack of rain. Our tanks are now empty and we’ve started to use tap water to make the mortars!! We have planned to construct larger storage tanks to see us through any dry periods but no firm date on when we might get them yet.

We are going to look into using all of the rainwater that falls onto our yard area, which will need settlement tanks to remove any sediment in the water. This will also have to be pumped. Are ther any water harvesting experts out there that could help????

Judging by the way the mortars are selling at the moment we will need a lot of water!!!

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