Civil Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Leah Wild never intended to build a hempcrete house. She was ready to construct a
steel-framed, earth-sheltered home, and had had the designs drawn up, got planning
permission, and bought many of the materials. She was on the point of buying the
plot of land on which she would build it, when the vendor pulled out at the last
minute - leaving Leah, who had already sold her house, with three children and
nowhere to live.
Hurriedly looking around at what was for sale locally, Leah found a 1920s railway worker's
house: a single-storey chalet bungalow of timberframe construction, with 5mm asbestos
boards internally and externally. “There was nothing at all except the frame timbers sand-
wiched in between the asbestos sheeting. The suspended wooden floor was rotten, as was
most of the frame itself,” says Leah. “Absolutely every surface inside the house was covered
in asbestos.”
Always keen to build using natural materials, Leah was introduced to the idea of hempcrete
by a friend. After discussion with William Stanwix, she decided that hempcrete was the
perfect way of dealing with the building. “The hempcrete would be cast around the frame,
providing it with racking strength and excellent thermal performance. Because it's a relat-
ively lightweight material, it matched what was there in the original structure, so there was
no need for expensive alterations to the foundations. The hempcrete was easy to work with,
and it looks and feels beautiful. On top of that, the house in its original state was not con-
sidered to be a mortgageable property, but once we'd improved the overall strength of the
timber frame and put the hempcrete in, upgrading the thermal performance, I was able to
get a mortgage on what we had built.”
Because mortgage companies were wary about lending on it, the house was priced cheaply
considering its size and its location on a pretty Cotswold hillside just outside the town of
Stroud. Leah clearly had the vision necessary to take on this dilapidated, freezing, toxic
shell and turn it into the comfortable, healthy, thermally efficient house it is today. She says:
Search WWH ::
Custom Search