When we first met at this year’s European Industrial Hemp Association conference in Prague, I knew I was about to have a conversation with one of the world’s most respected experts in the design and construction of homes made from hemp materials. When we were finished, I was leaving full of new knowledge and with one dream – to spend my old days in a healthy house build with hemp.
What is your educational background and what were you doing before you got involved in the cannabis or hemp sector?
I’m the founder of the Ukrainian company called Hempire that specializes in manufacturing, distribution, and the use of hemp-based materials mostly in the construction industry. I’m a civil engineer by trade, I got my degree in Canada and have always been involved in the construction industry ever since graduating. My life truly rotates around the construction industry.
Before you started to work with hemp, you were working with traditional materials, building houses with normal stuff?
Yeah, before getting introduced to hemp, I was always involved in the construction industry, specifically in the sector of project management, working in Canada, Ukraine and other countries. My specialty is construction project management.
Regarding hemp buildings, could you share me of the most interesting projects you finished in the past years?
There are many. I got introduced to hemp lime in the year 2010, almost 15 years ago. Ever since then, my life has changed drastically. I have worked on many hemp building projects in Ukraine, France, Poland, USA, Lithuania, even in Hawaii! One of them is a set of dome houses that were built about five years ago. It’s a fantastic project where a special paint membrane was used on the facade of the building, because, usually, dome houses are not finished like that.
So, this special paint looks really beautiful. Another amazing project is in Ashland, Oregon, USA – a big homeopathic center. I just visited this project a few weeks ago, and it looks amazing, although still under construction. It’s about a 350 square meter building, which will accommodate a lot of people, and it’s going to include a shop and healing rooms. Every year we see new possibilities of what kind of beautiful structures one can build using this magical material. Next year, we’ll be able to post finished photos.
I understand you are always providing the consultation, your know-how, but the materials are sourced locally?
The key here is to source materials locally. In Ukraine, we manufacture Fifth Element binder using Ukrainian ingredients for European market, when we manufacture it in US, then we use only American ingredients. We, also, sell exclusive manufacturing and distribution licenses to produce our materials in other countries. In such markets, we try to manufacture it locally, out of local ingredients, to bypass the logistics and all that extra cost that falls on the client’s shoulders. Since we’re trying to make this system and technology as affordable as possible, local materials are a must.
What are the five main benefits of hemp as a construction material when compared to traditional methods?
There are many but five for me are: 1. energy efficiency, which is number one. The prices for electricity will never go down. So instead of investing in the fancy jacuzzi bathtub, it’s better to invest into materials that will save you money in your pocket every single day. That’s what hemp lime insulation does; it provides extremely comfortable conditions all year round and you save a lot of money on heating or cooling the building, regardless of where you are. No 2. is regulation of humidity. This material is like a sponge; it absorbs humidity and then releases it later on, providing extremely comfortable conditions for the homeowners. 3. is the health aspect. In this formulation, there are no toxic ingredients, and that’s going to be key for future construction materials.
Every year we see new possibilities of what kind of beautiful structures one can build using this magical material.
The health aspect is something that no one’s talking about; it’s a taboo topic in many reasons. Because as soon as people find out how toxic the materials really are in their houses, there will be billions of dollars or euros worth of lawsuits filed against the manufacturers. Many manufacturers hide their ingredients and recipes, and some of these ingredients are extremely detrimental to people’s health, especially for children. Advantages no. 4 and 5. are that it is a fire and mold-resistant material.
It’s extremely durable. We have done longevity testing and climate testing, where we had a sample in the lab completely soaked with water, frozen, and defrosted. They conducted 25 cycles to see what the effect would be. There could be even more cycles, but the test was done for 25 years of duration, and the difference in thermal efficiency between year 1 and year 25 was minimal (1-2%) . That’s how incredible this material really is.
Are there any studies and research supporting such claims?
When people tell me, “Oh, this is new and unproven,” I say to them, “Listen, I know exactly how it will perform because we have left buildings insulated with this material completely unprotected from weather conditions throughout the winter.” We would insulate the building, and then we would come back in the springtime to finish the plaster. Show me any other material in the world that is non-toxic, all-natural, energy efficient, and not afraid of temperature and humidity fluctuations. Imagine traditional insulation materials that are currently available on the market. You would leave them exposed to rough weather conditions, not even for the whole winter, just for a month, and they would get ruined.
That just tells you a lot: energy efficiency, health aspect, humidity regulation, fire protection, and mold protection. Wow.
If you take all the parameters, people always talk about energy efficiency, the R-value, or thermal conductivity when they test materials. It is a very false paradigm. You have to include all the parameters: health parameters, specific heat capacity, thermal mass, vapor permeability, energy efficiency, acoustics, sound insulation, EMF blocking, longevity and durability. Hemp lime is unrivaled. Any other material, I repeat, any other material cannot stand a chance against hemp lime if we are taking all the parameters I have just listed. You never choose a car only by the volume of the engine, right? You look at different parameters before you buy the car. Same here; you cannot be just looking at the thermal conductivity, which is, also, is very good for a Biobased material(hemplime has a 0.065 (W/(m⋅K)) ..
When you are building a house from scratch, you can build it with materials that include hemp? What are the basic materials?
]On the outside, you can have a lime-based plaster. On the inside, you can have lime-hemp plaster. In between, you have a timber frame and a hemplime. There are projects where clients were very specific that they didn’t want any toxic materials, only nature-based ones. We have flooring boards made from hempwood, which is awesome.
You can have ceiling tiles, bed sheets, table tops, textiles, carpets, and all other things that are made out of hemp. There are projects where people are very careful in selecting the materials, and I that because people before couldn’t care less about the quality of the materials as long as it was cheap. Now people are waking up and starting to be very conscious about their health and the health of their loved ones.
I have an old house with old stone walls, and I wanted to insulate it from outside. I don’t want to use polystyrene or other toxic materials, which would just make it stop breathing. Does it work even in conjunction with other materials, such as traditional bricks?
Absolutely. We have even insulated concrete wall from inside the building, even though all engineers and architects said that you cant do it. I told them, “Yes, you would be correct; you usually apply the insulation material from the outside. But you can do it from the inside, if the material is vapor-permeable, and hemp lime is a vapor-permeable material, meaning that it can let water vapor move in and out of the wall, which is amazing, as long as you keep the finishing natural, clay or lime-type plaster on it.
This technology got popular in France and England specifically for that reason. They have a lot of old stone castles and buildings that require retrofitting. These buildings are extremely cold and uncomfortable to live in. They had a fireplace, and they would sit right in front of the fireplace. Now, there is this hemp material that they started using in the late ’80s and early ’90s.
You can have ceiling tiles, bed sheets, table tops, textiles, carpets, and all other things that are made out of hemp.
They were insulating the stone walls from inside the building with this material, and it showed great results because the number one problem in those stone buildings is mold. It’s the high humidity, which is highly uncomfortable to live in. If you have high humidity, no matter how comfortable the temperature is, you will always feel uncomfortable. There is a comfort zone for the relative humidity inside the building, which is between 40 to 60%. If you keep RH within those values, then you feel very, very comfortable in that environment, and that’s what hemplime provides automatically by nature.
That sounds very interesting.
Retro-fitting is definitely one of the aspects that we’re going to be using in Ukraine, where we have to adapt a lot of old concrete basements into bomb shelters. Usually, basements inside buildings are moldy with a weird smell. You go down there, and there’s always moisture problems in any building in the world without proper ventilation. This material will be able to create extremely comfortable conditions when you’re retrofitting with it. Our oldest project that we have done is retrofitting a concrete wall and insulating it from the inside. It’s a yoga studio in Ukraine that’s been completed nine years ago. The hemplime there is as hard as a stone and it is in perfect condition.
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The second part of this interview will be published soon.
