Identical sized mini-houses are built with hemp-lime wall assembly (front) and “conventional” fiberglass/OSB/drywall and Tyvek walls (back) at a Grassroots Development demonstration site in Fargo, ND. Photo courtesy of Grassroots Development

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Hemp Building Company

Midwest Natural Fiber

Haven Earth PMA

By Jean Lotus

Twin houses built side-by-side on 10th Street in Fargo, ND, will compare the building and operational costs of hemp-lime insulation and “conventional” building, as well as the resilience and health environment in each type of building.

The mini-homes were built in four days this fall at The Hive, a property managed by Grassroots Development in Fargo.
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The two identical homes –13 feet X 23 feet with 12-foot ceilings – have a traditional wood frame, however the walls of one home are filled with fiberglass insulation, while the walls of the second home are filled with hemp-lime (“hempcrete”).

In partnership with regional scientific agencies, the two buildings will be compared for energy consumption of heating systems, temperature and relative humidity, air quality, air leakage (via a blower door test) and comparing overall build cost.

*The outer walls of the hempcrete demonstration house are plastered at the Hive, in Fargo, ND. Courtesy of Grassroots Development*

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Homeland Hempcrete

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Prairie PROducers

“We’re constructing these units so that people can experience a healthy, sustainable, low-carbon structure,” said Grassroots project coordinator Sydney Glup Kenny in an email to HempBuild Mag. The company will rent the mini homes out via AirBnb, “with the hopes that this exposure will give people the confidence to choose hempcrete as it gains traction in the mainstream building industry,” Glup Kenny said.

The mini hemp home will be available to out of town visitors as well as “anyone in town who wants a fun staycation/change of pace for a few days, travel nurses, and anyone who is curious about experiencing hempcrete for themselves,” she said. The Hive will feature a compound of mini-homes plus honeycomb-shaped design elements and a pollinator garden to pay tribute to bees, one of earth's “most important species,” organizers said. The hempcrete house will also feature HempWood flooring, manufactured in Murray, KY.

*Hemp-lime wall and floor assemblies during construction in the Hive mini-home. Photo courtesy of Grassroots Development.*

The hempcrete was installed by Bismarck, ND-based Homeland Hempcrete owner Matt Marino, who built the walls with the cast-in-place method. Marino’s company is also rolling out a pre-built hemp modular wall system, but “we had a hard enough time getting [hempcrete] past the building permit department,” Marino told HempBuild Mag.

Homeland’s panel system will be used for Grassroot Development’s next project, a single-family home of about 1,300 sq ft in the Prairie Parkway development in South Moorhead ND. The new house will be designed by Meyer Group Architecture (MGA), a LEED certified architect out of Duluth, MN, Grassroots said.

The scientific readings on the twin mini-houses will be collected and analyzed by the Minneapolis-based non-profit Center for Energy and Environment (CEE) over a 12-month period to provide a complete picture of how hempcrete compares to traditional fiberglass over the course of a cold winter and hot summer in North Dakota.

The project is also being assisted by Minnesota-based Agricultural Utilization Research Institute (AURI), a state-sponsored innovation research center that helps bring agricultural products to commercial applications.

Riley Gordon, principal engineer with AURI, installed sensors in both homes to monitor moisture, air temperature and energy usage.

“There is a lot being said right now about what hempcrete can do, but there just isn’t a lot of good research to back up any of the claims with numbers,” Gordon said in a press release. “This study will finally be able to answer some of those questions. If we get some good data, it will help inform not only the construction industry, but growers and processors too. There are a lot of groups who have been holding out on making decisions about investing so hopefully these results can help de-risk the opportunity and drive decisions.”