It sounds like a headline from the future: the weekend before Thanksgiving, a bulldozer came for the first example of a printed home that was supposed to help the housing crisis in the city of Musc…
  • guitars are real@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    251·
    11 months ago

    Yeah, so two things.

    • Standard hempcrete mixes don’t exist which raises the barrier to entry substantially. You have to make your own at this time or buy a custom mix off someone. It’s not surprising that they likely got it wrong, as they’re community college students who were already playing with advanced industrial processes.
    • You’re not supposed to use hempcrete for load-bearing applications to start with, it lacks the structural strength!! What were they thinking!! It looks nice, has that lovely earth tone, and it has good insulating properties, but that’s it! It’s a finishing material! Here’s a page from some random builder I found on Google who specializes in hempcrete construction:

    Areas of use. It can be used to build self-insulating walls, roofs and screeds It can be adapted to all types of building project including new builds and renovations. It is not a load-bearing material. Consequently, when building walls, it is cast around a primary or secondary structural frame made of timber, metal or concrete.

    Anyways, as someone who’s looked into this stuff before, I’m irritated they did it like this. They were supposed to figure this out before they started printing. Where the hell was their professor?

    • Cris@lemmy.worldEnglish
      8·
      11 months ago

      It wasn’t hempcrete they used (there’s a note about the article being edited) and the article says that it performed appropriately in the lab, and they chose to tear it down because once built it didn’t meet the requirements they had established in the lab it should be able to meet