International Residential Code Commentary for the Hemp-lime Appendix was submitted at the beginning of June. US Hemp Building Association will take over ICC development of hemp building products in the future.
IRC Commentary for Hemp-lime Appendix Submitted
Over the last few months, we have been working to complete the International Residential Code (IRC) commentary for the Hemp-lime (Hempcrete) Construction appendix. We are happy to announce that we have submitted the documentation for the IRC commentary in early June. This is the end of an almost 2 year effort from the hemp industry.
We want to thank everyone that was involved in both the creation of the base IRC code, the reason statement, and the commentary for the Hemp-lime appendix. Mary Dempsey from Mpactful Ventures, Kiko Thébaud, and Jacob Waddell from the HBI led the charge on the IRC code development. Mary and Jacob continued to lead the process through the commentary development. None of the progress would have been possible without the assistance of the code consulting team of Martin Hammer and David Eisenberg. Anthony Dente from Verdant Structural Engineers performed the necessary structural engineering work on all levels of the document. The members of the small group on the IRC commentary were Cameron McIntosh, Co-Owner of Americhanvre, Matt Marino from Homeland Hempcrete, Tim Callahan from Callahan Designs, and two representatives from the USHBA Board of Directors Alex Sexsmith, Principal at Sexsmith Architects, and Tai Olson, Director of Operations at US Heritage. There were also over a dozen other professionals that reviewed the documents. We also need to recognize the many donors that contributed to cover the costs related to the creation of these document, especially the large contributions from Environmental Living Industries and Grassroots Development LLC.
Thank you to everyone who was involved. We have accomplished something that has increased the feasibility of using hemp-lime around the country and we should all take pride in our work.
Please see our previous blog on the development process and the IRC Commentary Commercial for more information.
USHBA to Lead Future ICC Efforts
The HBI and the US Hemp Building Association (USHBA) have had discussions about the future ICC efforts. The plan is that the USHBA will head the ICC efforts with a committee of members for future submissions. They will also be looking for people to fill the leadership positions of managing the project and dealing with administrative duties.
Please see our previous blog on the future of the ICC revisions for hemp building products for more information on the future schedule and process of the IRC and International Building Code (IBC) submissions.