All in all, Terry Radford’s new product \u2014 with apologies to Pink Floyd \u2014 looks to be anything but another brick in a wall.<\/p>\n
That’s because the president of Just BioFiber, based in Airdrie, Alta., believes\u00a0it has come up with a hempcrete-based brick that is more than the equal of the usual homebuilding materials.<\/p>\n
Radford, president and CEO of Just BioFiber, says\u00a0his company has found a way to combine hempcrete\u00a0\u2014 the wooden core of the hemp plant \u2014 with lime and water to create a building block\u00a0that he believes has the potential to change the way we build homes.\u00a0Radford\u00a0says the product is as environmentally-friendly as it is user-friendly.<\/p>\n
“My brother is the guy who actually invented the product. What had happened is he started working with hempcrete and fell in love with the material because it had these great properties,” Radford said.<\/p>\n
“The benefit to hemp is it’s very insulative. It has thermal retention and captures CO2 while it’s growing, [at a rate] four times\u00a0faster than trees, so\u00a0it’s a carbon negative material. We’re actually removing carbon from the atmosphere and storing it inside these\u00a0building materials.”<\/p>\n
Lego-looking bricks
\nIn addition to being more environmentally-friendly than traditional building materials, the bricks resemble giant Lego building blocks, and offer superior cooling and heating properties, Radford says.<\/p>\n
“The No. 1\u00a0advantage to having a hemp building is probably the indoor air quality for the occupants,” he said.<\/p>\n
“It regulates humidity. There’s no mould that can grow,” he said.<\/p>\n
“It’s very warm in winter and it’s cooler in the summertime \u2014\u00a0it’s basically just an ideal building material for interior comfort and air quality.”<\/p>\n
“This works really well in hot climates,\u00a0without the need for air conditioning, and same in cold environments.”<\/p>\n
The company’s hemp blocks\u00a0are also fire-resistant, Radford says, before pulling out a blowtorch and\u00a0demonstrating by holding the flame to some hempcrete.<\/p>\n
“It does not burn,” he said. “It does not contribute to the flame. No smoke. No flame spread. And if you feel the back of the material, as you can tell, there’s no thermal transfer. It’s very insulated and fire resistant.”<\/p>\n
What that means, he added, “is that the firefighter going in to a building that’s been on fire \u2014\u00a0it’s still safe. You still have structural integrity of the entire building.”<\/p>\n
What’s the catch? You can’t use them below grade (underground). The company offers an alternative for below-grade purposes.<\/p>\n
Building process
\nIn the past, Radford says, hempcrete\u00a0blocks slowed the building process because it needed time to dry out.<\/p>\n
“We’ve developed a manufacturing process where we can get our blocks manufactured on the truck within four days of production,” he said.<\/p>\n
“It’s a much faster process, and when it arrives at the job site, once they’re stacked up, you can start applying finishes to the interior and the exterior,” he said.<\/p>\n
“So it’s quicker build times \u2014 and [also] you don’t have a requirement for high-skilled labour to build them, either.”<\/p>\n
Price-wise, Radford says, the hempcrete-and-lime bricks are competitive with traditional materials.<\/p>\n
“Right now, our cost and\u00a0speed is about the same as building with stick frame,” he said,\u00a0“but we’re a little more expensive than stick frames currently.<\/p>\n
“We’re about the same as insulated concrete form, but we’re\u00a0much faster. We’re about half of the build time of insulated concrete form\u00a0because there’s no steel, no rebar and\u00a0no concrete, so you don’t have to wait for that to set up.<\/p>\n
“Again, as soon as the wall is built, you can start putting your floor or your trusses on top of the wall and\u00a0keep building. So there’s no interruptions to build time.”<\/p>\n
Hemp is booming<\/p>\n
As far as supply goes,\u00a0Alberta is hemp heaven, Radford says.<\/p>\n
“There’s a large amount of hemp being grown, and\u00a0the Alberta\u00a0government has been helpful to us,” he said, adding that easy access to lime from Exshaw makes the province a good fit for his firm.<\/p>\n
It turns out that hemp is a growth crop right across the country, he says.<\/p>\n
“That number keeps increasing every year, as hemp becomes more and\u00a0more popular as a crop with the growers \u2014\u00a0not only for the fibre, the part that we use, but also for grain and for cannabinoids,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Those are the real drivers in the marketplace right now, with Canadian farmers \u2014\u00a0hemp grain, hemp seed \u2014 and now with newfound uses for cannabinoids, that becomes the next high value use for hemp.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
All in all, Terry Radford’s new product \u2014 with apologies to Pink Floyd \u2014 looks to be anything but another brick in a wall. That’s because the president of Just BioFiber, based in Airdrie, Alta., believes\u00a0it has come up with a hempcrete-based brick that is more than the equal of the usual homebuilding materials. Radford, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","nova_meta_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572],"tags":[12430,11749,11885,13594],"supplier":[16435],"class_list":["post-69279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based","tag-buildingmaterial","tag-construction","tag-hemp","tag-insulation","supplier-just-biofiber"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69279\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69279"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=69279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}