Civil Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Temporary shuttering boards
Temporary shuttering is erected to create the mould for the internal and external faces of a
hempcrete wall. Once the hempcrete has been cast and has taken its initial set, the shutter-
ing is removed and moved on around the frame so the next section can be cast. Temporary
shuttering is usually either attached to the frame or built out from it using long screws and
spacers.
Shuttering boards need to be stiff enough to hold their shape without lots of extra rein-
forcement, yet light enough to handle and carry easily in large sheets, and hard-wearing
enough to be used again and again. There is no definitive rule about what type of board
should be used, but the following criteria should be considered. No one board will meet
all the criteria, but with a bit of thought a good compromise can be achieved. The board
should be:
hard-wearing
cheap
lightweight
stiff/flexible as required (e.g. you may want to cast a curved section of wall or recess)
easy to fix (to the frame and to neighbouring boards)
easy to mark on and cut
able to be recycled elsewhere in the building project once the hempcrete is cast (e.g. in-
corporated into the building as floor or roof boarding, or used to board out a shed or
workshop).
You will probably also want to consider whether the board is:
low in embodied energy
made from natural materials or synthetic materials
made from materials from a sustainable source.
Early on at Hemp-LimeConstruct we experimented with using chipboard flooring, which
easily fits together with the next board as it comes with tongue-and-grooved edges, and
this reduces the amount of fixings required and speeds up the work. However, we have
now moved over to using almost exclusively OSB, for the following reasons:
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