Also, building green means avoiding Portland cement like the poison that it is. I believe magnesium oxide cements are especially compatible with vegetable reinforcement? I wonder if any other “geopolymer” cements, some of which can replace Portland cement in any application, are stronger, less expensive to make, last far longer, and put maybe 1/10 the CO2 into the atmosphere (Geo Blue II; lime and “pozolans,” like pumice), are also especially compatible with bamboo reinforcement?

Hemp hurds–the short-fiber core of the hemp plant after the long “bast” fibers in the bark have been harvested–can be made into newsprint–or mixed with lime, whereupon the silica-rich plant matter apparently basically turns into a lightwieght, strong stone with some insulation value, so that a wall of the stuff a foot or so thick makes for a well insulated home with the durability of stone construction. Combiine that with a sort of bamboo timber frame, and bamboo splints or branches as reinforcement in the hempcrete, and you might end up with a fairly economical, very “deep” green home.

And if Oregon farmers don’t bring hemp on line fast enough–and they seem to be dragging their feet and I’m not sure why– about Fall harvest time 2016, Oregon is going to be awash in now-legal marijuana sterms and branches that right now have no more value than they have THC, but which may have bast and/or hurd fibers just as useful as industrial hemp. I’d like to find out, and it would tickle me to design homes made of ‘boo and “boo,” especially if it caused some of the federal war-on-drugs-industry law-enforcement types to freak out–“ohmygod, now they’re making houses out of the devil’s weed!”

Wanna experiment? email me.

I used to manufacture this kind of laminated bamboo (panels and flooring) in 1995 at my factory here in Vietnam, it was not easy at all, the process requires lots of labor, glue and machining. After having been down that road I still prefer to use bamboo in a more natural state (its great the way mother nature did it). All that glue, energy and work needed lessens the green value, locally sourced wood may even be greener.

James Wolf