Look through the window on the side, can you see what this shed is made from?

Hempcrete is made of the shredded inner woody core of the hemp plant, mixed with lime based binders, & water.

It was first developed in France in the 1980’s as a method of adding Thermal Performance to medieval timber frame buildings, whilst allowing the historic building fabric to continue working in the way it was intended to.

In 2015, Kimbriki was approached by Ray Rankin, a spokesperson for the Hemp Industry in Australia. He wanted to help us design a hempcrete building to demonstrate the great Ecological Qualities of Hempcrete as a building material.

So, we decided to work with Ray and the Hemp industry to construct a small Hempcrete Shed here at the Eco Garden.  This Hempcrete Shed is another shining example of Sustainable and Ecological principles.

Our Hempcrete Shed is used for storage of our Seed Bank and other preserved foods, because Hempcrete walls are fantastic for keeping the temperature ‘even’ inside the building.

WHY Hempcrete?

• Great Insulation qualities. Cool in summer & Warm in winter. Also, good sound insulation
• Hempcrete walls continue to absorb Carbon from the atmosphere for 10 years or more.
• Natural materials – Hemp ‘herd’ is the chopped-up stems of commercially grown Industrial Hemp plants.
• Relatively cheap for the building materials. (But relatively high labour costs)
• Quick to build, warm & personal feel, soft organic appearance.
• Hemp grows 50x faster than a tree and demands little water to grow.
• Hempcrete is fire resistant, non-toxic & mould resistant.
• It is suggested that Hempcrete structures will last for 300 years or more as long as it is kept dry through good roofing and sufficient rendering of the external surfaces.

The Building Process

We decided to use this opportunity to educate as many people as we could from the community, about HOW to build a Hempcrete building.

We engaged with Ray Rankin & his colleagues from the Hemp Industry to help us conduct a 2 day, hands on, practical, Learn-As-You-Build class for a 15 people.

The concrete slab floor and the wooden frames for the walls, and the roof, were built before the 2 day workshop. By the end of the 2 days, all the walls were up and the door frame was in. The door and other finishing off were completed in the few weeks following the education workshop.

We used as much Reused Materials as we could, sourced from our Kimbriki Buy Back Reuse Centre