iHemp issue #15 May 2021 Fibre Construction | Page 32

outside walls will gently warm during the day and then , by evening that warmth can radiate through and warm the inside of the building .
" Hempcrete has Acoustic Superiority . When you walk into an internal hemp walled room you instantly notice it ’ s like a recording studio . Most people would notice this , but as I am a sound engineer I really noticed it and was delighted . As opposed to a traditional build that buzzes and rings .
" Hempcrete is very attractive . Once we lime plastered some of the inside walls we realised that it was starting to sound like a jib board house , so we left a number of the walls and spaces without the plaster . Hempcrete is light and soft when dry ( 6 weeks from installation ) it can be flakey like weetbix and come apart if you knocked it continually , in order to fortify that we used Sodium Silicate ( Water Glass ) to spray on . Visually it looks better than I ever expected .
" I am so impressed with it , I am now going to build a new Sound Studio entirely made from hemp . Hemp insulates from sound so well , planes could fly over and we ' d never hear them . The Hempcrete is so dense , you just don ’ t hear anything . It traps all the acoustic energy and disperses it , so well .
TOBY TIPS for getting your Building Consent :
You need a proven building system . The Council need to know that your system is going to produce consistently , and it be durable . The only system we could find that had the tests , that would meet the council requirements was a French company Lhoist , that made a product named Tradical HEMCRETE ( no P ). They had a system that was proved in Australia . Proven to pass the Australian Building Code in terms of performance and reliability .
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So what I needed to do was write a document that linked the New Zealand Building Code to the Australian