Product category:
Concrete, Cement, Admixtures
News Release from: Lhoist UK | Subject: Tradical Hemcrete
Edited by the Buildingtalk Editorial
Team on 10 October 2006
Adnams begins journey to repay carbon
debt
Adnams Brewery insulated Distribution Warehouse is using pioneering materials including Tradical Hemcrete, a bio-composite of Hemp and Lime, in its walls.
The Adnams Brewery insulated Distribution Warehouse in Southwold, Suffolk is the first major project in the UK to reverse the damaging effects of greenhouse gases produced in construction, by using pioneering materials including Tradical Hemcrete, a bio-composite of Hemp and Lime, in its walls The walls are diaphragm structures built using 100,000 specially developed, unfired, lime and hemp blocks and a cavity filled with an insulation of Tradical Hemcrete
This article was originally published on Buildingtalk on 10 Oct 2006 at 8.00am (UK)
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The result is that up to 750 tonnes of CO2 emissions have been addressed in just this one project.
Using conventional materials, the walls of a building of the same size could have been responsible for up to 600 tonnes of CO2 emissions.
The walls built with Tradical Hemcrete lock up a net 150 Tonnes of CO2 emissions.
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Therefore, the Adnams warehouse has made a potential saving of up to 750 tonnes of CO2 emissions by incorporating Tradical Hemcrete technology in its construction.
(That makes the CO2 savings the equivalent of emissions from travelling for 625 years in the typical family car, driving the annual typical mileage of 12,000 miles).
Tradical Hemcrete is a combination of patented air-lime based binders together with the woody core of the industrial hemp plant and this results in a product with a net capture of significant amounts of carbon from the atmosphere, locked up in the plant material.
Hemp, in common with all similar plants, transforms carbon dioxide during its rapid growth and captures the carbon, releasing the oxygen to atmosphere.
This has an immediate positive effect in achieving the sequestration of the principal greenhouse gas and furthermore, this captured carbon is then locked into the fabric of the buildings constructed.
High insulating properties of the Hemp Lime walls means that the 8000m2 distribution centre will have the ability to maintain the internal temperature at 11-13 degrees centigrade without any refrigeration or heating system.
As well as significant cost savings both in capital and running costs, that means energy savings and therefore more reduction in the on going CO2 emissions from the building.
The ability to store the thousands of litres of beer and wine in these conditions when the project is completed in September 2006 is in large part due to the outstanding thermal performance of the Tradical Hemcrete filled diaphragm block walls.
The project also uses lime mortars, plasters and renders, as well as appropriate coatings, such that the vapour permeability of the walls, essential for their thermal performance, is not compromised.
Tom Woolley, Professor of Architecture at Queens University Belfast, Chair of the Hemp Lime Construction Products Association and author of 'Natural Building' comments: "Most buildings in the UK using natural and low carbon materials are small houses, however the Adnams hemp walled warehouse catapults this environmentally friendly technology into main stream commercial building.".
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