Year: 2022

the ‘drug house’ is done. i’m not even joking, that’s the name the tradies gave our new home; it probably sounds more exciting than telling the guys at the pub that you’re working with ‘industrial cannabis’. it took us 10 working days to finish it, and i’m proud to say that was pretty much what…

the trouble with building with hemp is that it is not immediately visible if the work has been done more or possibly less well. that is only revealed when the formwork is removed. then everyone can see if the brew (we learnt that is what the mix of hemp, lime, sand, binder & water is…

here we go, time to pull the formwork off and we’ll be able to see if we’ve done a good job or not. did we tamp too hard? not hard enough? – if so parts of the wall may just fall out. will we see cool wave patterns? or will it just look like a…

let me clarify this right away: when i say rough start i mean the circumstances could have been better. mostly, we could have done without that rain we were having. we started on tuesday, and then the friendly folks from the weather bureau forecast rain practically coming in vertically for wednesday. it wasn’t quite as…

yeah, bad pun, but there you go: we have finally started. the hemp is being turned into walls, slowly but surely. hemp hurd, lime, water, sand and binder all mixed together and then carefully tamped between two sheets for formwork 300 mm apart. we were inducted into the secret society of hemp brewers by the…

look at that, it almost feels like a house. it has recently seen the addition of key features all houses need (the serious ones anyway): a roof and windows. sounds easy enough, but in this day & age of supply-side shortages getting either on time is not a given. what is a given, however, is…

we don’t really enjoy this. we’d much rather just see the plants grow in whatever way it works best. the problem is that someone in the past has decided to upset the balance using heavy machinery, and now we’re stuck with all this semi-decomposed timber. if you look closely between sec 19 and 27 you…

after a few days of pretty strong winds it was a quiet day today, and i was able to end the drone up for a little look. a few things have changed, and it’s great to see it starting to come together. for one the roof structure is almost complete, and the roof can now…