Hempcrete Projects Fails and Succeses

My last update on our hempcrete adventure we had just received out pallet of hurds. Well that evening the temp went down to 26 degrees and it started snowing.
I just could not wait to start another project.

I went out to the garage and started in.
This time I was lowering the ratio of binder to Hurd mix slightly and I decided to dry mix the binder before I added the hurds. When adding water I ended up adding a little to much water.
I poured my mixture into the molds and left them to sit.
The mixture did not set up! After reviewing what I had done I believe that I did not mix the lime and durobond together enough. Also having to much water to the mix may have compounded the problem.

This mold is still slowly drying after two weeks.
The hydraulic set never happened so with all the moisture it is taking a long time to cure. The hydrated lime requires oxygen to set.
So learning from my failure is still a success!

A few days later my wife and I did another batch and casted the mix into some different molds.
We took care to make sure our binders were mixed very well before adding the water and hurds.

This experiment was a success. The hydraulic set occurred within a couple of hours. After two weeks they have cured out nicely.

As you can see in the pic we took one and broke it apart
to check out. At this point it was semi hard and not rigid.
After about a week they are curing out nicely and a lot harder.

We have started on our next project! A Hempcrete chicken coop! Stay tuned
Thanks for following our adventures!