Pubdate: Tue, 07 Jul 2015
Source: New York Times (NY)
Column: The Appraisal
Copyright: 2015 The New York Times Company
Contact: http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/lettertoeditor.html
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: Matt A.V. Chaban
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/hemp.htm (Hemp)

CANNABIS CONSTRUCTION: ENTREPRENEURS USING HEMP FOR HOME-BUILDING

STUYVESANT, N.Y. - It started with Hurricane Katrina: the flooded 
houses in New Orleans festering with mold, many uninhabitable to this 
day. Then came the earthquake in Haiti: thousands dead, crushed by 
homes that should have been their sanctuaries.

James Savage, then a Wall Street analyst living on Central Park West, 
grew disturbed about the conditions he saw on television and in the newspapers.

"There has to be something better we can do than this," he recalled 
thinking last week as he sat at the kitchen table inside his new home 
here on a cliff overlooking the Hudson River 120 miles north of New York City.

The solution he has come up with is not some space-age polymer or 
recycled composite but a material that has been in use for 
millenniums, though it is more often demonized than venerated on these shores.

"Who knew hemp would be the answer to what we were looking for?" said 
Mr. Savage, who started a company to create building materials 
derived from cannabis.

Now that the forbidden plant is enjoying mainstream acceptance, Mr. 
Savage is hoping to put hemp to use not in joints but between joists. 
His first project has been his own 1850s farmhouse, though he says he 
believes hemp-based building materials can transform both agriculture 
and construction throughout New York.

While cannabis has had a long history as a fiber used in ropes, sails 
and paper products - Presidents Washington and Jefferson both grew it 
- - Mr. Savage is among a small number of entrepreneurs who have 
instead turned to a novel application known as hempcrete.

Hempcrete is made using the woody, balsalike interior of the Cannabis 
sativa plant (the fiber for textiles comes from the outer portion of 
the stalk) combined with lime and water. Though it lacks the 
structural stability its name might suggest, hempcrete does provide 
natural insulation that is airtight yet breathable and flexible. It 
is free from toxins, impervious to mold and pests, and virtually fireproof.

"I know, I know, everyone talks about our buildings going up in 
smoke, but the joke is on them," Mr. Savage said. In England, some 
insurers actually provide a discount for hempcrete because of its durability.

And because the material is grown rather than mined, like traditional 
cement, or manufactured, like fiberglass, it gives new meaning to 
green building. Mr. Savage envisions a "hemp basket" stretching 
across New York's rugged farmlands supplying locally sourced 
insulation throughout the Northeast.

What hemp is not, as advocates constantly remind people, is a drug.

"You could smoke a telephone pole's worth of our stuff and still not 
get high," said Ken Anderson, whose company, Original Green 
Distribution, based in Minneapolis, makes a hempcrete marketed as Hempstone.

The strain of plant grown for hempcrete contains no more than 0.3 
percent of THC, the active ingredient in marijuana. That is compared 
with 5 to 10 percent found in the hallucinogenic and medicinal varieties.

"It's like the difference between a wolf and a poodle," Mr. Savage 
said. "Same species, totally different animal." Even so, both strains 
were outlawed starting in the 1930s.

Mr. Savage hardly looks the part of a hemp evangelist. He favors 
polos to tie-dye T-shirts and drives an Audi sedan.

"Did I smoke grass when I was young?" he said, standing beside a 
poster for the original Woodstock concert. "Sure, I did, but it 
wasn't like I was looking for a way to make money off hemp. It just 
happened to be the thing with all the attributes we were looking for 
in a building material."

He came upon hempcrete through a simple Internet search.

The material was developed in the 1980s in France, though it has 
roots going back centuries not only to homes as far away as Japan but 
also to Merovingian bridges in ancient Gaul.

Hempcrete has since caught on across Europe, where hemp cultivation 
was never criminalized. Hundreds of buildings now use hempcrete, 
including a seven-story office tower in France, a Marks and Spencer 
department store in the United Kingdom, and even a home built by 
Prince Charles.

Though the illicit aspects of hemp may have held it back in this 
country, marijuana's growing popularity could finally be helping 
hemp's spread. "Some people thought hemp might help get marijuana 
accepted, but it's going the other way around," said Eric Steenstra, 
executive director of the Hemp Industries Association. "I don't think 
you'd see quite the same excitement if we were building with flax or jute."

Yet federal regulators remain dubious, with virtually no domestic 
hemp production. It is legal to use it, but generally not to grow it. 
The farm bill passed last year began to allow for hemp-farming pilot 
projects, and while New York and Connecticut have both begun 
programs, no crops have been planted. At the moment, all raw material 
must be imported, and last year Canada alone shipped $600 million of 
hemp to American businesses.

A bigger hurdle may be getting hemp-lined homes past building inspectors.

"If you show them two-by-fours filled with fiberglass, they know what 
they're dealing with," said Tim Callahan, an architect in Asheville, 
N.C., "but you mention hemp, and they scratch their heads." He has 
worked on about a dozen hempcrete structures, including what is 
thought to be the first home in this country to use hempcrete, built in 2010.

Yet hempcrete presents its own issues, particularly the need for 
thicker insulation than traditional materials.

Even in Brooklyn, where it would seem a natural fit, hempcrete has 
been a tough sell for Gennaro Brooks-Church, a contractor who 
specializes in green building. "When a client is spending $2 million 
on a brownstone and sinking in another $1.5 million on renovations, 
you'll be hard pressed to get them to sacrifice even an inch of 
space," he said.

For his part, Mr. Savage was never able to bring his product to Haiti 
- - he blames Haitian fears of United States law enforcement - and an 
effort in Mali failed because of a 2012 coup. Around that time, the 
first marijuana decriminalization laws began to pass in the United 
States, so he turned his focus closer to home.

To foster wider acceptability, Mr. Savage and his three-year-old 
business, Green Bui lt, which he runs out of his hemp-lined home 
office, is working toward developing a panelized system. Akin to 
drywall, it would be easier to market and install than poured 
hempcrete, he said. And, combining housing trends, he is developing a 
400-square-foot "tiny house" made up of two or three circular, 
shippable hempcrete modules.

His only project so far has been turning his red brick farmhouse into 
a hempcrete laboratory, where many of the walls have been insulated 
with it, eliminating his need for air-conditioning.

Mr. Savage said his hemp rooms even smell different, though not the 
way most people might expect. "It has a freshness to it," he said.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom