- Location: Hopland, California, USA
- Project Type: Private house building
- Year of the project: 2018
Scope of the project: When we expanded our operations to California, it was crucial to showcase our “Fifth Element” binder at work, that is why we came to an agreement with legendary Solar Living Institute to set up a small house (under 120 sqft) on their premises. This tiny house was designed according to golden ratio by Ukrainian architect Olga Sukha.
Challenges: We believe in sustainability, and for this project we searched for US produced hemp hurds, which was quite a challenge since most of hem products come to US from Europe or China. The curvature of the wall was extreme which made the formwork setup a painful affair.
Benefits: We have managed to show that one can use only US made raw materials to build a hempcrete home as our binder was produced in California and hemp hurds came from Colorado.
Outcome: Any visitor to Solar Living Institute can visit the house and experience its ability to withstand extreme heat (it gets quite hot there). We are proud to become on the first companies to use hempcrete material in the state of California.