A family has self-built their home by using eco-friendly hempcrete - the non-mind altering part of a cannabis plant.

Paul and Blanka's home is part of Graven Hill, Bicester, as part of a ground-breaking experiment.

The area was left to nature for decades but with the need for affordable housing, it was transformed into a series of plots for people to self-build.

The experiment started when the local council bought the land from the Ministry of Defence, but instead of selling it to developers it pre-approved outline planning and sold the plots to the public for £100,000 a plot with utilities pre-installed.

The landowners then make their homes from scratch creating a whole new street. Channel 4's Grand Designs: The Street documents each plot owners build.

The six-part series took five years to make as cameras follow the first 10 pioneering households who build on a brand new street from scratch in what's the UK's largest self-build project.

(Image from Channel 4)

In the UK only eight percent of homes are self-built compared to 80 percent in Austria.

Episode three follows self-builder Paul and Blanka, who along with their two young sons, live in a rented home in Oxford.

The couple had always dreamt of building a family home using sustainable materials including hempcrete and labour intensive techniques.

"It's important for us to consider what's going into the house...a lot of it is unnecessary where there are natural alternatives for the synthetic products," Paul says.

The family started out with a £50-60,000 budget with work beginning in June 2016 and finishing much later in August 2018. 

(Image from Channel 4)

Other homes are erected quicker than Paul and Blanka's, but they stick to their vision using eco-friendly products including non-hallucinogenic cannabis.

"I guess Hempcrete is slightly unusual and that goes around the timber frame," says Paul in tonight's episode.

Hemp is a sustainable crop farmed in the UK but doesn't have the same mind-altering properties of Cannabis.

It has a wide variety of uses from body oils to health food and livestock bedding and now as a construction material.

"The material, Hempcrete, isn't common, but it’s certainly earned its pedigree in the UK," says presenter Kevin McCloud.

"It’s a mixture of hemp, which is the stuff they use on the floor of equestrian arenas and is like finely chipped bark and lime. When mixed with water and lime it forms a kind of eco concrete, the texture of horse poo, which you stuff in-between shuttering.  The entire house is built from this stuff - it's highly insulating, structurally sound, has high thermal mass and locks carbon into a building."

(Image from Channel 4)

Paul opts to mix the hempcrete in an old tractor then, when ready, pours it into the walls.

"At £15,000 it's a lot cheaper than bricks and mortar and as eco-friendly as you can get," explains McCloud. "But it takes time and saps energy."

Twenty tonnes has to be mixed and then hacked up by hand. When set the process is repeated "until exhausted".

"[Hempcrete] looks like concrete, but in feel it's a much gentler wall," McCloud says. "This is a house made out of stuff found in the woodland."

Layer upon layer is built up to provide insulation, but it takes longer than Paul first thought and by October 2016 three other plots are up and running with new ones are about to start despite Paul and Blanka working on their plot first.

 

(Image from Channel 4)

To get back on track he invites his neighbours to a hempcrete party to help fill the walls with their new friends joking it "has a nice smell".

"Paul and Blanka slogged and crafted most of this house with their bare hands, occasionally with the help of friends and family," says McCloud. "When things got really tough, the street lent a hand too, so it’s been very collaborative at times. It’s a house built from friendship really and has a very cool vibe about it."

However, while materials may be cheap, their handcrafted house costs more in labour than they anticipated driving costs up.

Time also drags on and they end up having to give up their rented home, instead opting for a nomadic lifestyle while the build continues.

But the area's most eco-friendly home gradually comes together - eventually.

The finished home has hemp and lime layered up to create 40cm thick walls set on a raft of cork insulation.

 

(Image from Channel 4)

The upper floor has a bedroom for their boys, a study and a master bedroom, while the attic has a plant room and water tanks fed from their guttering, which McLoud describes as "like having hefty hippos in your attic." The roof is made from steel with solar panels and the exterior is a natural lime render.

Afterwards McCloud told Grand Designs magazine the home was one of his favourite builds. He said: "There's Paul and Blanka’s eco home made out of Hemp Shiv, which is, effectively non-hallucinogenic cannabis used as a building material. It’s also a beautifully crafted building and a house jam-packed with some very cutting-edge eco-gadgetry which I was fascinated by.

Finally after years of work the family moves in, even though there's still work to do.

The final cost is also more than expected coming in at £300,000, but the home runs at zero cost thanks to its sustainable energy.

 

(Image from Channel 4)

Praising the scheme that enabled them to self-build Paul said: "It's enabled us to build a house near where we were based...Every building [in the street] has something special that you wouldn't see anywhere else."

"You stay in the community and it has huge benefits for everybody," adds Blanka.

 

Taken from www.mirror.co.uk

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