One of the barriers to building residential homes with hempcrete is that there’s no mention of hempcrete in any of the building codes that set the standards for health and safety in the construction industry.

Most municipalities in the U.S. look to the International Code Council for direction. Hempcrete’s absence from these codes leaves local building inspectors scratching their heads when it comes to building with this natural material.

But that’s all about to change.

At an April 2 hearing in New York, the ICC approved the proposal for hempcrete construction to be added to the International Residential Code. This is the first step toward the ICC’s formal adoption of hemp as an officially recognized building material, according to Jacob Waddell, executive director of the U.S. Hemp Building Association.

The proposal must now go through a public comment period. A final vote by the ICC will take place in September, after which the specs for hempcrete building should be adopted.

Waddell is a guest on the Lancaster Farming Industrial Hemp Podcast this week. He talks about the process his group went through to build the case for hempcrete and what IRC approval would mean for the hemp and construction industries.

Hempcrete — or hemp-lime, which more accurately describes the material — has three basic components. Hemp hurd, which is the inner woody core of the hemp stalk, is mixed with a lime binder and water.

Once the material is cured and dried, it forms a long-lasting building material offering resistance to fire, mold and fungus, and provides high-rated insulating properties and an opportunity to sequester carbon, a strategy for mitigating climate change.

Also, we take a trip to a hempcrete training session hosted by Cameron McIntosh at Americhanvre Cast Hemp.

US Hemp Builders Association https://ushba.org/ Americhanvre Cast-Hemp https://americhanvre.com/ News Nuggets

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PA Senate Delta-8 Memo https://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/Legis/CSM/showMemoPublic.cfm?Chamber=S&SPick=20210&cosponId=37166 Thanks to our Sponsor IND HEMP in Montana https://www.indhemp.com/