Hempcrete Projects Push the Envelope in Massachusetts

Lancaster Farming Industrial Hemp Podcast

We’re taking the show on the road again. This week we’ll hear interviews from my recent trip to Massachusetts, where I visited the Cape Cod Hemp House in Harwich, and the Hillside Center for Sustainable Living in Newburyport.

Michael Monteiro gave me a tour of his newly built 6,000-square-foot house.

“It may look like any other house here on the cape. We have cedar sidewall shingles on the house,” he said. “But ... the house is actually insulated with a biobased material called hemp lime, or hempcrete. So behind these white walls, we have an insulation material that doesn’t come from oil. It actually comes from a plant.”

Monteiro worked with an architecture firm to design and build a house that looks like a normal cape house, but uses the latest technology in green building, which he explains in detail during the interview.

Then I drove up to the Hillside Center for Sustainable Living in Newburyport, where I met with local builder David Hall, a partner in the vertically integrated real estate and building firm Hall & Moskow.

Phase 3 of the Hillside Center is under construction now. It is billed as the largest industrial hempcrete project in North America, and when complete will be a 12-unit apartment complex.

“We set out 10 years ago to build a community here of very low carbon living,” Hall said. “We have already built 30 units that meet passive house criteria and perform beautifully.

“It’s not an exaggeration to say 1,300 watts, like a typical hair dryer, would heat the homes because that’s what they consume. They’re very tight, very successful,” he said.

The walls of those first 30 units are made from concrete, which is extremely carbon intensive. But hempcrete has a much lower carbon footprint, which is why Hall & Moskow are using it in the next phase of the community.

You can hear all about both of these building projects on this week’s show. Plus an interview with Lindsay the waitress at Persy's Place in North Plymouth.

The Hillside Center for Sustainable Living http://www.hillsidecenterforsustainableliving.com/ The Cape Cod Hemp House https://www.capecodhemphouse.com/ Persy’s Place https://persysplace.com/ News Nuggets Hemp: I Can Tell Your Future, Just Look What’s In Your Hand (Part 5/5) https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthoban/2023/12/16/hemp-i-can-tell-your-future-just-look-whats-in-your-hand-part-55/ Some hemp with your wine? Study shows better soil, potentially flavors from intercropping https://news.mongabay.com/2023/12/some-hemp-with-your-wine-study-shows-better-soil-potentially-flavors-from-intercropping/ Thanks to our Sponsors!

Mpactful Ventures https://www.mpactfulventures.org/ IND HEMP https://indhemp.com/ King’s Agriseeds https://kingsagriseeds.com/ Cornell Hemp https://cals.cornell.edu/cornell-agritech/products-we-research/hemp National Hemp Association https://nationalhempassociation.org Americhanvre Cast-Hemp https://americhanvre.com/