Practicalities on a hempcrete build - The Hempcrete Topic: Designing and Building with Hemp-lime - page 439

of external grade. Wood wool board is external grade and can stay out in the rain, although
we usually cover it just to be on the safe side.
Mixing area
From storage, the materials will be moving to the mixing area. The choice of mixing area
is discussed in more detail in Chapter 15 , but, essentially, you need to think about how eas-
ily you can transport materials there from the storage area, and how a reasonable quantity
of materials can be stored next to the mixer and kept clean and dry. The mixing area will
ideally be under cover but well ventilated, and ideally slightly apart from areas where other
people are working, because of the binder dust flying about.
Wherever possible, have a clean floor to the mixing area, preferably boarded, so that any
dropped hempcrete mix can easily be swept up and returned to the mixer. Needless to say,
the mixing area needs to have a good supply of water with sufficiently high pressure, so it
doesn't slow the mixing down while you are waiting for tubs, or a tank (or bore hole!), to
fill up.
An area for cutting
Although the majority of the joinery work has been undertaken during the framing stage
(before the site was cluttered up with people ferrying tubs of hempcrete around), the shut-
tering team still needs to cut, and re-cut, boards and battens, as the shuttering is taken down
from sections of frame once they are cast and re-fixed to the next section.
As most of this cutting involves 2400mm x 600mm boards, and a table saw is not always
practical, a corner of the floor is often turned over to an area for marking out and cutting
boards with handheld circular saws, and battens with a hand saw or a chop saw. Ideally,
this job would be done in its own area, slightly away from the messy hempcrete-placing
work, in order that expensive power tools are kept as clean as possible and people are not
always walking through where you are measuring and cutting. However, in practice a well-
defined separate area is rarely available, and on a larger build the cutting area will gradu-
ally move around the frame to follow the work, otherwise you end up carrying the heavy
boards over long distances.
If one particular area where all the cutting is to be done has to be identified, then it makes
sense to put this close to where timber and boards are stored. The distance from the cutting