3D Printing Hempcrete Buildings by fred-bartels

Hi Erik, I just stumbled upon CoLab yesterday, so I wasn't prepared to fill out all of the proposal, but I'll plug away it over the next few days. Thanks for the feedback! Fred

Hi Matt, Thanks for your comment and interest! Any information you can share about spraying hempcrete would be useful. Have you folks reached out to architecture schools? I found out about hempcrete because a participant in a workshop at Yestermorrow (http://www.yestermorrow.org) just happened to bring some along to share with the class. Yestermorrow is now offering a 2 day course on building with hempcrete but only because this person happened along. http://www.yestermorrow.org/workshops/detail/building-with-hemp?StartDate=&SortColumn=&SortDir=&Search=hemp Fred

Colorado's amendment 64 will allow for the production of industrial hemp. This amendment has already been passed and includes a timetable in which our congress will write and enact legislation. http://www.regulatemarijuana.org/s/regulate-marijuana-alcohol-act-2012

idea 1) Also, the potential for getting donations for this kind of thing, if you can do it right.. A lot of cities have ways you can purchase Abandoned properties for just the cost of back taxes owed, or even foreclosed homes for cheap. Use the property, organize people together, have some of the donations used to importing hemp, and bringing in lime and mixing.. Someone there to teach the rest how to create the hempcrete mix.. idea 2) OH wait 3D printing.. uhm.. Well, 3D printing typically takes a liquid form and prints it out into the solid form of that substance.. How are you going to liquify lime? Ok just spewing ideas, I see you can powder down lime, and you could probably finely powder hemp as well to where you can mix the two with some added liquid, print it out and then let it dry.. Don't most 3D Printers also print a layer of plastic or rubber around it to hold the liquids while it dries? As for now my other idea is still good until the 3D printing aspect of it can be worked out.

Wow. I signed up to this site just to interact with this proposal. I stumbled upon this searching for hemp 3d printing plastics. I don't have a 3d printer, but I'm working on getting one (I haven't even bought a truck yet after selling my old car and travelling, reprap should be soon though). So much to already build on from the comments above. I'm amazed I just found this site. MIT seems to be getting some stuff done. I'd say there might be something there. Vermont seems to be a great place to get involved with both the Yestermorrow course. So, I have some political experience. I think the best thing to do is to jump into the current movement to legalize hemp. It's been legalized in Kentucky, and Sen. Paul introduced a Federal Bill to recognize states ability to legalize hemp. That'd be a great place to start growing it locally. You need the money for property though. A grant of some sort, once the entire project is lined up, or even see if MIT or Yestermorrow will pay you for Hempcrete for their projects. You can sell it and use the profits to buy stuff for your project (this is how some non-profits actually function). You might even talk to some government officials in Kentucky to see if there is money for such a project as yours. Since it was Republicans that led the initiative in Kentucky I doubt getting a subsidy for the project is likely though. Vermont would be a better place to get a grant. They a bit more "socialist" there. But they haven't passed a bill yet. I might think some of the Zeitgeist Movement folk might be interested in doing some sort of project building a model planned city from hemp that used current technology to do their basic concept. Colorado and Washington might be places to grow hemp too. We could also just buy hempcrete from the U.K. for experiment purposes, or set up the lab out there. Perhaps we can talk to the people making the hempcrete buildings in the U.K. We could benefit from a member in the U.K. I'm down to help out with hempcrete research and 3d printing research specific to said material, it was probably going to be what I spend a bit of free nerd time doing anyway.

Dear Fred, Thank you for your submission. We felt that your proposal was very interesting but that it was not detailed or specific enough to be named a finalist. We hope that you remain engaged with the CoLab and would welcome a future proposal on this idea with more technicial details and specifics outlined. You might, for instance, focus on how one might support or mobilize a political effort to legalize hemp in the United States by emphasizing sustainability and the promise of hempcrete buildings. Or, alternatively, you might consider finding a teamate(s) to help you flesh out technical details such as the potential costs and impact of hempcrete buildings.

It seems that the good fellow who initiated this proposal has left the building... I have been working on a very similar project for some time and would love to speak to any interested party about collaboration. Here is a link to my 3D Printing Hempcrete Proposal: https://www.climatecolab.org/web/guest/plans/-/plans/contestId/1300403/planId/1305704 Thank you, Chad K.