New Hempcrete Home in Colorado Foothills was ‘Worth the Wait,’ Owners say

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Written By Jean Lotus

Cameron McIntosh of PA-based Americhanvre poses on the boom lift used to spray hemp-lime (hempcrete) on a new home in Drake, CO. Photo courtesy of Diana Skrejeva

New Hempcrete Home in Colorado Foothills was ‘Worth the Wait,’ Owners Say.

By Jean Lotus

Colorado couple Vladislav “Vladi” Skrejev and Diana Skrejeva have waited a long time — years, in fact —for hemp-lime insulation work to commence on their 2,000 sq. foot home in  the foothills of Colorado, but the excitement when the house was finally hemped made it all worthwhile, they said. 

After almost three years of planning for their home, the hempcrete insulation was sprayed in a matter of days by PA-based Cameron McIntosh of Americhanvre Cast Hemp using the Ereasy spray apply system. 

“The house looks magnificent,” Diana happily told HempBuild Mag in a text. 
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The new fire-resistant hempcrete home in Drake, CO is built near the burn scars from last year’s Alexander Fire, which destroyed 29 homes. Photo courtesy of Diana Skrejeva

The two-story new home north of Storm Mountain in Drake, CO stands tall in the neighborhood with mountain views to the south of Colorado “14’ers” Longs and Meeker peaks. 

“The neighbors call it the opera house,” Diana confided. Neighbors were definitely curious about the work on the big house as they passed walking dogs. “I can’t wait until we are able to have some of our neighbors come and play their violins here.”

But the landscape also reveals burn scars that almost reached their neighborhood – a reminder of last fall’s Alexander Fire, set by an arsonist, that burnt 15 acres and destroyed 29 homes. 

“Fire protection is definitely one of the reasons we chose hempcrete,” Vladi told Hempbuild Mag.

Diana Skrejeva and Vladislav “Vladi” Skrejev look out a window hole of their new hempcrete home in Drake, CO. Photo courtesy Jean Lotus

The house was first designed and framed in the waning years of the pandemic. The choice to build with hempcrete was influenced by a friend from Bulgaria, who builds hempcrete homes in Eastern Europe. Vladi shows off scars on his wrists from hoisting lime imported from Bulgaria – which ended up being too old to use with the Ereasy spray system. He rejuvenated bags of imported EU hemp that had grown dusty with a sand strainer and added some animal bedding hemp purchased at the local feed store. 

As the couple worked to comply with Larimer County codes and inspections, the home was boarded up with plywood to protect the framing. That covering proved the perfect backdrop for a spray-applied nine inches of hempcrete on the inside and then an added three inches on the outside with the plywood removed, McIntosh said. 

Cathedral ceilings in the living room required some hair-raising scaffolding maneuvers while spraying and scraping the walls, McIntosh said. Photo courtesy Jean Lotus

The county required only an R-Value of 18 for the walls because it hasn’t adopted the most recent codes which demand an R-value of 30 in walls, Vladi told HempBuild Mag.

Research conducted by Americnahvre shows Eareasy sprayed hempcrete with an R-value of around 2.2 per inch, but hempcrete’s thermal performance is much better than that because of the hemp’s monolithic envelope, McIntosh says.

A $1.9 million research SBIR contract from the US Army is now funding hempcrete performance research by Penn State University’s Pennsylvania Housing Research Center (PHRC)  led by Dr. Ali Memari. The group is measuring the thermal performance of six of the dozens of hempcrete homes sprayed by McIntosh to capture ”in-field” thermal resistance. “We know it’s much higher than 2.2 per inch,” McIntosh said. 

Hempcrete has been proven fire resistant for decades in European tests, but the Ereasy testing for ASTM  E119 fire resistance  is also important to reassure county building code officials when building in a wildfire zone, McIntosh said.

Spraying walls with the Ereasy hempcrete spray system. Photo courtesy of Aaron Grail

Around 50 percent of Colorado homes are built in the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI). Because the state currently is one of a handful that has no state building code, every local department looks at natural building materials differently. There are at least four  other hemp-lime structures in Larimer County, but Vladi and Diana’s is among the largest so far. 

On the site, Sebastopole, CA-based Ereasy operator Aaron Grail, of Aaron Grail Construction, said he was excited to work on “such a big and complicated project with all its challenges.” 

‘The clients were fantastic and this is going to be a great showcase for sprayed hemp.” Grail added.
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Aaron Grail runs the mixer at the hempcrete build in Drake, CO. Photo courtesy of Jean Lotus

“Diana originally wanted a simple A-Frame,” Vladi confided. “She’s waited for a long time for this house.”

“I could live anywhere with a roof over my head,” she told HempBuild Mag.

But Diana was thrilled with the results.

They’ll be plastering the house later in the year. Meanwhile they’ll continue to live at the bottom of the canyon in their Fort Collins townhouse with their 7-year-old son.

“I’m full of appreciation and gratitude towards every single person who helped and supported us so far on the journey of building our home,” Diana wrote in a text. “It is still far from being done, but boy-oh-boy aren’t we blessed to be surrounded by some big-hearted people …. and magnificent craftsmen,” she added.

The crew took a break for photos (L-R) Daniel Lotus, Cameron McIntosh (above) Diana Skrejeva and Vladi Skrejev. Photo courtesy of Jean Lotus

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