Hempire Products - Anyone any experience?

MissSteel

Hi Everyone,
I am considering going with Hempires products for external rendering of an old stone House instead of going with hydraulic Lime. Does anyone have any experience of this product? We visited the supplier and it sounds fab but of course He was selling the product! He said it is alot quicker/easier to apply and there is less chance of cracks..etc. I would love to hear if anyone has used this or can recommend it. Also i would love to know where i could go to see a building that has been rendered with this.
Thanks

owen85

hi, did you go go with hempire in the end? im certain im going with hemp lime insulation but am just checking out hempire building products to see if they are any good. apparently you can get some bad mixes of hemp lime from different companies etc

would love to hear from you
Owen

MissSteel

Hi Owen,
Yes we went with it in the end. Hemp Lime was really the only option for us in the end. Our walls were really rough and off level. The hemp lime mix was amazing for straightening the walls inside, but we wont know how great the insulation is until we start heating the house. There is a lot of labour involved in packing it all, but its pretty unskilled too so if you have a few willing friends it helps!
We rendered the outside with a hemp lime plaster, followed by a skim coat of fat Lime and sand followed by the fat lime dash coat. The hemp lime layer is great, sticks really well and doesnt crack. We have seen a good bit of cracking in the top coats.
I didnt think there were other companies in Ireland supplying Hemp Lime products, but we didnt have any issues with ours. We wouldnt really know much about it tho, so could have got a bad mix and not know it!!
Hope that helps!

owen85

thanks for the reply.
i heard that after 1 year the hemp lime insulation starts to work at its best.
when you say you have seen a lot of cracking on the top coats, do you mean this happened with yours? do you know why this happened?
also, when you were doing the inside, did you leave the battons in situ or remove them and place more hemp lime in their place?
was trying to figure out if its best to leave battons which could be used for anchoring points for built in units, wardrobes, shelves etc. or to remove the battons therby decreasing coldbridging. but if i do this im not sure if the hemp lime can be used as anchoring points for the built in units.

sorry for all the questions, but sometimes i wonder if what the suppliers are telling you are correct, or if theyre just trying to get rid of their product.

MissSteel

No probs about the questions, not sure how much help i am but i'll try!
Yes we have a good few cracks in the top coats. I think it is the nature of Lime plaster really. The plasterer spent alot of time rubbing up the cracks in the sand/lime layer as it dried but we couldnt rub up the dash layer. Lime is supposed to be self healing so we are hoping these thin cracks wont cause us any problems, we may have to lime wash the walls as a final layer of protection.
We left the batons in situ, I'm not sure how well you would be able to removed them once the mix is packed. We used 2 x 1 laths, three laths running horixontal at top, middle and bottom with the vertical laths fixed to these to try to minimise cold bridging. we also did most of the first fix wiring and plumbing running in the space also. We went with at least 100mm of Hemp lime but the walls were so off level that we could have up to 600mm in some places. I dont think you would be able to anchor anything to the hemp Lime itself so you would really need the batons for this. Also think of where your rads are going to go so you can put ply in to support them.
I am not sure how to post pics here but i will try put up a couple so you can see what we did!

MissSteel

Dont know if this will work but here goes..
[[IMG]http://[/img]

MissSteel

Or this

owen85

thanks. i cant open the pics though. i dont know how to post pics either unfortunately.
the cracking as long as they are only tiny cracks should be ok. but if they are bigger youd want to be careful about rain water seeping into them. although hemp lime is breathable, you dont want it to deal with excessive water. it can get trapped , effect your structural walls, foundations etc. cracking usually happens due to it drying out to quickly..this may happen for various reasons, strong winds, walls that absorb the water from the hemp lime mix etc.

can i ask who you got to do the plastering?
im not sure if its against boards. ie rules to give out such info?

zom

owen85 wrote: »

thanks for the reply.
i heard that after 1 year the hemp lime insulation starts to work at its best.

I read that hemp lime wall is releasing oxygen like trees and other plants:

Like other plant products, the hemp crop absorbs CO2 gas as it grows, retaining the carbon and releasing the oxygen. 165 kg of carbon can be theoretically absorbed and locked up by 1 m3 of hempcrete wall over many decades

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hempcrete

Natural1

I am also looking to user Hempire Hempcrete. Would love to hear if it is a good insulation?