Harvesting houses for the planet (BBC) {building materials & technologies}

[eppur_se_muova]

By Patrick Jackson
BBC News

Sustainable rotation crops like hemp are the cost-effective future of building, according to Tom Woolley, a professor of architecture at Queen's University Belfast.

One hectare of land can produce enough hemp stalk to build a house, he told the BBC News website, and using about 12% of the UK's set-aside land, you could grow enough hemp to build the 200,000 new houses the country needs. Then you have the fibre and oil for other products.
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With existing buildings, he believes that the crucial thing is to improve insulation, for example with a mixture of hemp and lime on old brick buildings, a technology used in France.
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Unido promotes Indian portable brick factories as one answer to cheap construction materials. Another project, now under discussion with Namibia, is a Russian technique for manufacturing building blocks out of sand and seawater.
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"It is a proven technology which cuts production costs five-fold, and can be used in both hot and cold regions."
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more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6612381.stm

[DawnIsis]

1. And if you run out of pot you can smoke your house

[Trillo]

2. local building codes are most often in the way.

There are only a few counties in the U.S. where alternative housing construction methods are tolerated.

I suppose if you have enough hemp stalks, you could have a hemp-bale house, just like a straw-bale house.

However, for this to ever be approved in the U.S., the hemp will have to be sold by mega corporation, with local officials getting their due cuts (ahem, 'permits' is what I meant to say).