The stud walls are going up!
As we have quite a bit of hemp and lime left over from hempcreting the external walls, we’ve decided to go for a ‘stabilised’ hemp-filled wall, following Alliance 4’s guidelines.
The studs are double with a gap in between to improve acoustic insulation, with phaltex top, bottom and sides, noggins where we need extra support for plumbing or shelves or electric fixtures, and bits boxed out where where we want to be able to access pipe joints in case of problems. The lattes (battens) are ready to go but aren’t on yet, pending the arrival of stainless nail gun nails, so that will have to be for another post… soon!
Tom fixing the headers
Trying to keep not-so-straight wood as straight as possible
Measure twice, cut once
Bob and Sophie getting it straight
Double studs for better acoustics
Jeroen squaring up
Fixing marine ply bracing at intervals
Tea break time
Oliver, Aurélie and Jeroen on the Makitas
Dirk Kuyt?
Sophie and Bob
6 Comments
Wolf Jordan
July 30, 2017 at 8:06 pmHow thick you make those inside walls?
We do this over here without the horizontal lathes…
Why to you think you need those?
As a finish, a lime-based render is always best. If you still have enough of this wonderful lime, then take half a bag of lime on 2 sacks of sand (riversand 0-1,5 or 0-2 mm works best). If you add some flax shives to this mixture, then you will need no reinforcement nets and you can cover the hemp-lime in only one layer of max. 1 cm.
Easy and strong.
Stronger than earth…
Lime and hemp lasts for centuries.
Earth and hemp… are ideal for making compost…
Marita
July 31, 2017 at 6:09 amThanks, Wolf! Easy and strong, we like that. And thanks for the tip on the flax shivs, we’ll give that a try. The walls will be 15-16 cms thick total, including the lathes (18mm) and 1-2 cms lime render finish. If we can do just 1 cm layer, then great. The horizontal lathes are for a bit more strength and stability and also because the hemp-lime filling is quite light and dry, not as wet and dense as full up hempcrete. Does that make sense to you?
Wolf Jordan
July 31, 2017 at 7:00 amIf you find no flax shivs, I have them… Made in Belgium. A whole bale is quiet cheap.
The carbonatation of lime is a double process. I cannot help this, this is natural physics… (look it up at Wikipedia).
The CO2, needed by the hydrated lime, the Ca(OH)2, will not, or barely, come from the air. A hempwall should be airtight, which means, if I understood well, that no air will pass through the hempwall…
So. What happens then? Well, the water evaporates. And it is exactly this damp that will take care of the necessary transport of CO2, offering it to the lime particles while passing by.
Conclusion: you need water. Even massive amounts of water…
If your mixture is too dry and/or not dense enough, I bet you are going to have troubles. Maybe even big troubles…
There is at the moment a case in Belgium where prefab hempcrete elements had been made with ‘quite light and dry’ mixture. Oh boy, did that go wrong…
Besides, each horizontal lathe might be a risk for horizontal cracks…
The old-time way of putting plasters, like for ceilings, was with small lathes indeed, but absolutely not the way you plan to do this… Sorry to say…
Better consider this before you really start to build those walls…
Chuck
August 8, 2017 at 5:18 pmOh dear I can feel the walls falling down already … but why (are the walls falling down)? When you say ‘…but absolutely not the way you plan to do this…’ what do you mean? Is it because of the plaster is being applied to laths on the walls rather than the ceiling or is it the size of the laths or …? It would be easier to give it due consideration with more specifics … if you have the time … and patience ;>)
Ah yes, back a bit earlier in your comments, what was it that ‘… boy did it go wrong…’ that went wrong with that mixture?
As always thanks for the feedback Wolf!
Wolf Jordan
May 5, 2020 at 8:13 amoops oops oops…
It is now the 5th of May, 2020, and now, quite by accident, I find this thread, with a question that I obviously missed…
It is clear that I am not very instagrammical…
And I am so sorry…
In the mean time you walls will be properly ready and finished, I suppose.
Because otherwise I have a tip. Some people here make walls, especially internal walls, with reed mats. They fix them starting at floor level, from one or even both sides, roll them up 20 or 30 cm or so, fill this with hempcrete, roll them up again, fill up, etc. untill they reach the ceiling. The reed mats afterwards are a perfect situation to put a plaster on, even covering the studs, without any risk of cracks.
In ceilings too, those reed mats are often used as a lost shuttering or lost formwork, ready to be plastered.
But this information will come to you too late, sorry again.
I still have no idea what the reason might be that I missed this post and this message and I have no idea either how I (or the computer) managed to reveal it now.
Marita
June 26, 2023 at 7:34 amDear Wolf, much worse is that I never saw this comment and replied – so sorry! We have not been very good on this website – better on Instagram @asinglething ! We’re very happy with the partition walls – the acoustic insulation is good and they also insulate very well the electromagnetic fields I think – at least we have trouble getting wifi working in all the rooms! I hope this finds you well.