Production of the largest hempcrete house in Europe completed
Made it! OPENLY founder Andy Keel in September 2023 in front of the ready-to-install wall elements and hemp bricks from Schönthaler.
Photo credit & newspaper report St. Galler Tagblatt / Der Rheintaler
For and by OPENLY, a new production process was developed for infilling classic timber studs with hempcrete or hemp lime, which made it possible to build around 1500m2 of exterior walls in 30 days. The concrete manufacturer Dade Design AG developed its own patent(Cancret.com) and developed its own new, mobile hempcrete mixing plant.
The production process and mixing machine are now available for hire for other construction projects. On the one hand for field factories and on the other hand in the workshops of timber builders. With this industrialization step, the costs of diffusion-open hempcrete walls are now at the level of a conventional wall structure.
Prefabricated hempcrete walls Cancret.com
Here you can find the CO2 balance of hempcrete
19 apartments / 1500m2 timber frame elements with CANCRETE (hempcrete) were erected in 8 weeks in Nov & Dec 2023 in Widnau SG near Lake Constance.
Newly developed mobile mixing plant for production at timber farmers and field factories
Timber system construction with hempcrete infill. For the Valley Widnau project, 1500m2 of walls were prefabricated in 30 days.
A 2-shell masonry is used. 12 cm hemp bricks, 20+12 cm infill in the element. The room partition walls are also constructed with hemp bricks as an alternative to plasterboard. A total of 2600m2 of bricks are used, making it the largest hemp house in Europe. And the best thing! Several dozen tons of CO2 are saved in the long term.
Close-up of the installed timber stud elements.