Grandma Builds A Tiny Home Out of Hemp Stronger Than Brick
(Time To Legalize It)
There
seems to be a common setback for people afraid to make their dreams become a
reality: They don’t know where to start. Not having experience in something doesn’t
make you any less capable of creating greatness or fulfilling your
passions, but it does take an open mind, a whole lot of patience, and
ultimately, the confidence that you can do it.
In
a world where old age seems to work against people’s confidence in you, Pam
Bosch shows having confidence in yourself is all it really takes to prove
them wrong. The grandmother from Bellingham, Washington, has never built a home
before, but is breaking barriers in the tiny home movement through what she views
as a pioneering experiment in sustainable living.
Her
organization, called Highland Hemp House, used imported hemp from Europe to
construct tiny homes boasting model energy and resource efficiency.
“Anybody
can do this. Grandma can do this. Grandma’s doing it,” the
62-year-old artist says. Bosch was determined to build homes out of hemp
after learning about its incredible sustainability and the minimal impact
it has on the planet compared to other building materials.
“We
should have as many buildings as we can that are built out of a renewable
resource that sequesters carbon, that is healthy and if it were legal would be
very affordable. It’s an agricultural waste product we’re using,” she
continued.
Hemp
is considered a dangerous substance by the DEA and is classified
a schedule I drug, like heroin and ecstasy, despite the plant containing
almost no THC and having zero psychoactive effects. The classification is
thought by many to be backed by the oil industry, which sees hemp as a
profitable threat, thanks to it being one of the best alternatives to plastics,
fuel, and various building materials.
Hemp
is also valuable to farmers, who can use it for soil remediation, plastic
composites, organic body care, biofuels, and health foods. In Washington, hemp
is now legal for livestock feed, but requires permission from the DEA
until other uses are legalized and regulated.
For
building a tiny hemp home, Bosch says it’s great for creating the plaster, so
long as weather conditions are right. “You want conditions like we’re
starting to see now – overcast, high humidity, because you don’t want it to dry
out too fast,” she
notes.
Because
permits for hemp houses don’t exist, Bosch has to stay within 120 square
feet. “I’m investing in this because I believe in it and believe someone’s
got to do it to make it legal,” she says.
Human
impact on the planet continues to change our environment, making
it essential that we become more conscious of how and with what materials
we build things.
Tiny
homes contribute to the awareness that we can thrive in smaller spaces while
also creating a sustainable future.
Check
out the video below to see how Bolsch is becoming a pioneer in the tiny home
movement, and proves that anyone can do it.
Have You Ever Heard About Hempcrete?
When it comes to new and sustainable housing ideas, it seems to always be about creating a more efficient home in terms of insulation, lighting, electricity, etc. Mainstream belief on the subject would have you believe that top corporations and government projects are working with the best possible technology to bring forth solutions that work and are going to be great for the environment. If that was truly the case, I can guarantee you that the whole world would be using Hempcrete right now. Haven’t heard of it? I’m not too surprised.
First
off, what is Hempcrete? Hempcrete is a building material that incorporates hemp
into its mixture. Hempcrete is very versatile as it can be used for wall
insulation, flooring, walls, roofing and more. It’s fire-proof, water-proof,
and rot-proof as long as it’s above ground. Hempcrete is made from the shiv or
inside stem of the hemp plant and is then mixed with a lime base binder to
create the building material. This mixture creates a negative carbon footprint
for those who are concerned with the carbon side of things. Hempcrete is much
more versatile, easy to work with and pliable than concrete. In fact,
earthquakes cannot crack these structures as they are 3 times more
resistant than regular concrete.
Since
lime is the binding material, builders do not have to heat up the lime as much
as a supplier would need to in the industrial creation of concrete.
This results in a lot of energy conservation when producing Hempcrete vs.
concrete. Jumping back to the carbon aspect, Hempcrete sequesters (hides or
puts away) carbon as it is very high in cellulose. Through it’s growing life
cycle, it takes in large amounts of carbon which is then built into the home or
building it is being used to construct. This does not allow the carbon to be
released into the atmosphere. A home can save about 20,000lbs of carbon when
being built out of Hempcrete
Hempcrete
is a much more superior building material due to the fact that it is a very
strong, lightweight and breathable material. When used as exterior walls, it
lets water in without rotting or damaging the material. In a practical sense,
instead of needing to build homes with space between exterior walls, which are
then filled with insulation, you can simply use a Hempcrete wall. As humidity
is taken in from the external environment, the Hempcrete holds that humidity
until it is ready to be released again when the climate is less humid. Since
the lime is wrapped in cellulose, the lime takes a bit longer for it to fully
petrify but is still incredibly strong. Over time, the lime looks to turn
back to a rock, so the material becomes harder and harder until it petrifies
completely. This means the wall will last thousands of years vs. 40 – 100 like
normal building materials today. Another great aspect to Hempcrete is
that if too much is mixed during building, you can return it to the soil as a
great fertilizer. Since hemp grows to maturity in just 14 weeks, it is a very
powerful, versatile, cheap and sustainable solution.
Other
notable factors are that hemp requires no fertilizer, weed killer pesticide or
fungicide to grow it. The hemp seed can be harvested as a nutritious food rich
in Omega-3 oil, amino acids, protein and fiber. It is considered a “super
food”. The outer fibers can be used for clothes, paper and numerous everyday
items. This truly is a very powerful plant and should be a no brainer when it
comes to it being used in a very mainstream way.
Why Is Hemp Illegal?
Hemp
looks very much like marijuana and is technically in the same family of plants. But unlike modern
maryjane, it does not contain anywhere near the amount of THC needed for
someone to get high if they were to smoke it. The funny thing is, in the
United States, hemp is just as illegal to grow as marijuana is. But how
can this be? If we can’t get high from it, then what’s the problem?
In
the past, hemp was used for many things: clothes, cars, plastics, building
materials, rope, paper, linens, food, medicine and so on. In fact, it used to
be mandatory in the United States for farmers to grow hemp if they had the
land. You can find out even more about hemp here.
The
fact is, hemp was very popular throughout the 1800s and 1900s because it
was incredibly useful and easy to grow, and its derived products were so
long lasting. But one day that all changed; it became illegal and so did its
friend cannabis (marijuana). How did this happen?
The History
During
Hoover’s presidency, Andrew Mellon became Hoover’s Secretary of the Treasury
and Dupont’s primary investor. He appointed his future nephew-in-law, Harry J.
Anslinger, to head the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs.
Secret
meetings were held by these financial tycoons. Hemp was declared dangerous and
a threat to their billion dollar enterprises. For their dynasties to remain
intact, hemp had to go. This then led them to take an obscure Mexican
slang word – ‘marihuana’ – and push it into the consciousness of America. The
reason why they changed the name was because everyone knew of hemp and how
amazing it was for the world. They would never be able to get away with banning
hemp, so they used a name they knew no one would recognize.
Not
long after this plan was set in place, the media began a blitz of ‘yellow
journalism’ in the late 1920s and 1930s. Yellow journalism is essentially
journalism where stories with catchy headlines are put into the mainstream
media to get attention, yet these stories are not well researched or backed up.
They are often used simply to sway public opinion. Many newspapers were
pumping stories emphasizing the horrors and dangers of marihuana. The “menace”
of marihuana made headlines everywhere. Readers learned that it was responsible
for everything from car accidents to looser morals, and it wasn’t long
before public opinion started to shape.
Next
came several films like Reefer
Madness (1936), Marihuana:
Assassin of Youth (1935) andMarihuana:
The Devil’s Weed (1936), which were all propaganda films
designed by these industrialists to create an enemy out of marihuana. Reefer Madness was
possibly the most interesting of the films, as it depicted a man going crazy
from smoking marijuana and then murdering his family with an axe. With all of
these films, the goal was to gain public support so that anti-marihuana laws
could be passed without objection.
Have
a look at the following regarding marihuana from The Burning Question, aka Reefer Madness:
- A violent narcotic
- Acts of shocking violence
- Incurable insanity
- Soul-destroying effects
- Under the influence of the drug he killed his entire family with an axe
- More vicious, more deadly even than these soul-destroying drugs (heroin, cocaine), is the menace of marihuana!
Unlike
most films with a simple ending,
Reefer Madness ended with bold words on the screen: TELL YOUR
CHILDREN.
In
the 1930s, things were different from today in significant ways. The
population did not question authority or the media to the extent that we do
now, and they did not have tools like the Internet to quickly spread
information and learn about things that were happening. Most built their
opinions and beliefs off of the news via print, radio, or cinema. As a result
(and thanks to the explicit instruction of mainstream news), many people
did tell their children about marihuana. Thus, public opinion about this plant
was formed.
On
April 14, 1937, the Prohibitive Marihuana Tax Law, the bill that outlawed hemp,
was directly brought to the House Committee on Ways and Means. Simply put, this
committee is the only one that could introduce a bill to the House floor
without it being debated by other committees. At the time, the Chairman of the
Ways and Means was Robert Doughton, who was a Dupont supporter. With vested
interest, he insured that the bill would pass in Congress.
In
an attempt to prevent the bill from being passed, Dr. James Woodward, a
physician and attorney, attempted to testify on behalf of the American Medical
Association. He mentioned that the reason the AMA had not denounced the
Marihuana Tax Law sooner was that the Association had just discovered that
marihuana was hemp (or at least a strain of it).
Hemp
and marijuana are both varieties of Cannabis sativa, but this distinction was
purposefully obscured from the public. Since the law was not focused
on banning one or the other, both found their way into the ban. The AMA
recognized cannabis/marihuana as a medicine found in numerous healing products
sold that had been used for quite some time. The AMA, like many others, did not
realize that the deadly menace they had been reading about in the media was in
fact hemp.
In
September of 1937, hemp prohibition began. What was arguably the most useful
plant known to man at the time, at least in the West, became illegal to grow
and use: cannabis (marijuana) and hemp, one used to give a bad name to the
other, even though neither should have realistically garnered that negative
backlash. To this day, this plant is still illegal to grow in the United States.
To
the public, Congress banned hemp and cannabis because it was said to be a
violent and dangerous drug. In reality, hemp does nothing more than act as an
amazing resource to virtually any industry and any product, and cannabis is and
can be a useful medical substance that, when
administered correctly, can have many benefits. But it
should also be mentioned that cannabis has been abused over the years and
does have its negative side effects. This is a reality many in the community
don’t want to admit but it has to be said. We know the effects it has on
regular users under 25 years old as well as what heavy regular use can do to
serotonin levels. [1]
Fast
forward to today, and it is clear we are in some trouble when it comes to how
we treat our environment. The resources and practices we use today for energy,
as well as product creation, are very harmful and toxic to not just our planet
but ourselves. Despite the awareness that exists about hemp as an option to
transform how things can be done on this planet, governments continue to ban
this plant, and it is still often mistaken for marihuana due to their similar
appearance.
Luckily,
much more cultural and regulatory progress is being made on the side of
cannabis to not only illustrate the value of it medically, but also to better
understand its potential dangers. This helps to work out the difference
between fact and fiction so we can use the plant responsibly while taking
advantage of its benefits.
Sources:
From Collective
Evolution @ http://www.collective-evolution.com/2016/09/29/grandma-builds-a-tiny-home-out-of-hemp-stronger-than-brick-this-is-how-you-contribute-to-sustainability/
For more information about hempcrete see http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/search/label/hempcrete
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