Hemp Voices: Ali Memari, Pennsylvania Housing Research Center
Dr. Ali Memari, director of the Pennsylvania Housing Research Center (PHRC), and the Bernard and Henrietta Hankin Chair in Residential Building Construction, and a professor in the Department of Architectural Engineering and the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Penn State University.
My responsibilities as it relates to PHRC is to oversee activities designed toward knowledge transfer to the residential construction sector primarily in Pennsylvania and also the country as a whole. Our efforts in this regard focus on developing speaking engagements for builders, remodelers, code officials, and practitioner, develop webinars and provide content through various media. One important task of PHRC is to organize an annual conference where we invite several expert speakers to discuss topics that are current and of great interest to residential construction practitioners. We also organize a second conference, which is more academic in nature, where speakers/authors submit abstracts and then full papers prior to the conference. The papers are peer reviewed and then published in proceedings. The authors/speakers then have the option to make oral presentations at the conference.
My interest in hemp started back in 2017 when along with a couple of colleagues we were trying to identify a new sustainable material for homebuilding. We came across hempcrete and started to conduct some research and write state of the art review papers on the topic. Gradually, we were able to get some funding and engage students to conduct research toward contributing to advance the state of the art, including developing a stronger mixture design. For example, while the compressive strength of conventional hempcrete made of hemp hurd, fibers, lime, and water gets around say 50 psi compressive strength, our research has resulted in mixture designs that we can get 500 psi compressive strength. This advancement can help hempcrete block manufacturers to provide products that can be load-bearing for say single story homes. Of course, this is still research in progress, but this is the direction to allow hempcrete to be used as a load-bearing construction material, besides the current use of it as an insulation material.
With regard to the insulation properties of hempcrete, we have had the opportunity to field test several homes made with hempcrete walls and have measured the actual thermal resistance of the walls. Such information has then enabled us to run energy modeling of the subject homes to demonstrate the advantages of building homes with a sustainable material that can save homeowners on their electricity bills, while living in a healthy home that does not use synthetic materials for insulation.
What was a win for your company in the past year? As a researcher at Penn State University, I always look for opportunities to team up with industry to bring our technical and R&D capabilities to be combined with the practical experience of the industry partner to advance the state of the art in the field. In that sense, last year we have been successful to work with the company Americhanvre to get funding and work toward advancing the state of the art in hempcrete homebuilding. Furthermore, I have been successful along with my colleagues in publishing a few reports and/or scholarly papers on hempcrete construction.
What is something about hemp building/construction/processing you didn’t know a year ago? Just like any other new construction material, there has been plenty of developments related to hemp, from use of hemp as a wood for flooring or lumber to use of hemp fibers and seeds for many different applications. However, my interest is primarily in the use of hemp in building construction, and what we are seeing is that some companies are developing load-bearing hempcrete blocks, which seems promising.
What challenges can you identify for the hemp building industry that we must overcome? Just like any new material for use in home building, the building code must approve such material. While currently, the International Residential Cod has recognized hempcrete as a new type of insulationMy responsibilities as it relates to PHRC is to oversee activities designed toward knowledge transfer to the residential construction sector primarily in Pennsylvania and also the country as a whole. We develop speaking engagements for builders, remodelers, code officials, and practitioners, develop webinars and provide content through various media. One important task of PHRC is to organize an annual conference where we invite several expert speakers to discuss topics that are current and of great interest to residential construction practitioners. We also organize a second conference, which is more academic in nature, where speakers/authors submit abstracts and then full papers prior to the conference. The papers are peer reviewed and then published in proceedings. The authors/speakers then have the option to make oral presentations at the conference.
My interest in hemp started back in 2017 when along with a couple of colleagues we were trying to identify a new sustainable material for homebuilding. We came across hempcrete and started to conduct some research and write state of the art review papers on the topic. Gradually, we were able to get some funding and engage students to conduct research toward contributing to advance the state of the art, including developing a stronger mixture design. For example, while the compressive strength of conventional hempcrete made of hemp hurd, fibers, lime, and water gets around say 50 psi compressive strength, our research has resulted in mixture designs that we can get 500 psi compressive strength. This advancement can help hempcrete block manufacturers to provide products that can be load-bearing for say single story homes. Of course, this is still research in progress, but this is the direction to allow hempcrete to be used as a load-bearing construction material, besides the current use of it as an insulation material.
With regard to the insulation properties of hempcrete, we have had the opportunity to field test several homes made with hempcrete walls and have measured the actual thermal resistance of the walls. Such information has then enabled us to run energy modeling of the subject homes to demonstrate the advantages of building homes with a sustainable material that can save homeowners on their electricity bills, while living in a healthy home that does not use synthetic materials for insulation.
What was a win for your company in the past year? As a researcher at Penn State University, I always look for opportunities to team up with industry to bring our technical and R&D capabilities to be combined with the practical experience of the industry partner to advance the state of the art in the field. In that sense, last year we have been successful to work with the company Americhanvre to get funding and work toward advancing the state of the art in hempcrete homebuilding. Furthermore, I have been successful along with my colleagues in publishing a few reports and/or scholarly papers on hempcrete construction.
What is something about hemp building/construction/processing you didn’t know a year ago? Just like any other new construction material, there have been plenty of developments related to hemp, from use of hemp as a wood for flooring or lumber to use of hemp fibers and seeds for many different applications. However, my interest is primarily in the use of hemp in building construction, and what we are seeing is that some companies are developing load-bearing hempcrete blocks, which seems promising.
What challenges can you identify for the hemp building industry that we must overcome? Just like any new material for use in home building, the building code must approve such material. While currently, the International Residential Code has recognized hempcrete as a new type of insulation and has provided practical details in an appendix, we look forward to seeing much more developments in this area and expansion of recognition of hempcrete in the building code. However, this requires more advancement in the R&D side, and we hope that our efforts as the university partner for R&D would help the efforts by the practitioners in this realm.
Pennsylvania Housing Research Center, Penn State University
Contact: Dr. Ali Memari
Phone: 814-863-9788
Email: amm7@psu.edu
