On this week’s episode, we’re heading back to the Sun Valley to Talk Shop with Blake Eagle. Blake is a contractor who, after years of exposure to the unhealthy materials of standard practice building, decided to construct Idaho’s first HempLime home for his family. Blake shared with us the benefits of building with HempLime and the difference living with it has made to him and his family.
On this week’s episode, we’re heading back to the Sun Valley to Talk Shop with Blake Eagle. Blake is a contractor who, after years of exposure to the unhealthy materials of standard practice building, decided to construct Idaho’s first HempLime home for his family. Blake shared with us the benefits of building with HempLime and the difference living with it has made to him and his family.
Ava Robinson: On this week's episode, we're heading back to Sun Valley to talk shop with Blake Eagle. Blake is a contractor who, after years of exposure to the unhealthy
materials of standard practice building, decided to construct Idaho's first
hemp/lime home for his family. Blake shared with us the benefits of building
with hemp/lime, and the difference living with it has made to him and his
family. This is Trace Material.
Alison Mears: So thanks Blake for making time to meet with us today to chat. I remember
meeting you out in Ketchum at the Hemp Summit last year. When we came to
visit your house, I think with your wife and two girls?
Blake Eagle: Yeah! Yeah.
Alison Mears: It's so... You were really swamped with people that day. Everybody crawling all
over your house, and you were very generous and gracious in letting us all see,
kind of the amazing work that you had done there. So I remember that very
vividly being there with you and chatting with your girls, actually, I think I
chatted with your girls more than I chatted with you. But anyway, we, we kind
of wanted to catch up with you and you know, as you know, we're really deeply
invested in the whole hemp/lime space and we're looking at what's happening
in the country right now. And gaining insights from, from people such as
yourself, who've had experience working with hemp/lime, and trying to
understand how viable this construction practice might be going forward. So I
had a few questions to ask you, if you don't mind to just kind of gain some of
your insight. You know, hear about some of your wise thoughts about your
impressions of this material.
Blake Eagle: Yeah. Yeah. That's great.
Alison Mears: Great. So, so thanks very much for joining us today. So I don't know of anything
really about your background and kind of, and you know, your background in
construction and perhaps what, what has brought you to this moment in time
and to understand a little bit about your philosophy of building. So if you could
share some of that with us, that would be great.
Blake Eagle: Yeah. Well, after school didn't really know what I wanted to do. So I had an
uncle that was working with the union apprenticeship program and thought that
would be a good skillset to have under my belt other than some other
education, and wanted to learn how to build my own house someday. It took
me a lot longer than I wanted to. I moved to the Sun Valley area, you know,
shortly after the apprenticeship. And we were building custom homes for, you
know, the big million dollar, $10 million homes. So the caliber construction
background went from a union base, commercial background into a high-end
residential and built, you know, along with other contractors and myself 40, 41
houses now, I guess, including my own. So probably a good experience of all
phase of construction, I guess, in the residential and a little bit in the
commercial.
Blake Eagle: And when we decided to build our house, I was not impressed with standard
practice. The materials that we were exposed to on the job site every day can
be, you know, pretty, pretty toxifying, you know. You... The headaches from the
lacquers, things like that that are always, always on site. So we started looking
at healthier ways to build when we decided to build our own home. Something
that would be, you know, fairly sustainable, energy efficient and above all try to,
you know, use better materials. So when we did decide that it took us to build
our house, I guess it took us about nine months to get approved, just to get a
hold to the ground, to start the foundation.
Blake Eagle: Being that the US was not on board with any kind of hemp and lime building at
that time, 'cause we broke ground in 2012, finished in 2013, and the city was
just adopting an above code energy efficiency program. And since the
hemp/lime system did not have the ICC accreditations at that time they took it a
big challenge to accept it as a building material. So we were able to provide
some testing from the BBA, the British Board of Agrément from the UK, which
was our biggest help. You know, one of the guys from the Asheville project had
turned us on to their building official and helped coordinate between the– the
city, I guess, to see what would be allowable. So it was a bit of a process just to
get it out of the ground and seeing all these different types of what we'd been
doing. And I knew, you know, just knowing better what we wanted to do and it
was a challenge, so.
Alison Mears: That's, that's, that's great. So interesting that you kind of came to this... this
practice because you were interested in building your own house way back
when, when you were a young thing. That's the reason I, I went into
architecture, same, same impetus. So that's kind of a funny, funny coincidence
there. So can you tell us where you are right now? Because it's interesting,
cause we're hearing a little bit of background noise and it's interesting to hear
for us where you are, exactly.
Blake Eagle: Oh yeah. I'm on a construction site right now in the Sun Valley area. A retired
architect, actually, really nice client, and they're building their dream home
here. So it's very busy today and I've had a lot of– lot's going on, concrete to,
you know, finish work all going on at the same time. So there's about 50 people
here today.
Alison Mears: Amazing. Busy sites. So we can hear that some of the background noise that we
can hear. So what convinced you, do you think that hemp and lime was a viable
material to build your own house? Like why did you head in that direction?
Blake Eagle: Well, looking into what the UK was doing we really stumbled upon as I started
looking at natural building, stumbled upon the hemp and lime that was going on
and saw the brewery distributor ship. There was a large commercial project and
then quite a few of the residential homes. And so we just reached out to the
distributor of the product that we found was Tradical was the product we were
able to use, based on them having some testing certificates. But I guess the fact
that the house would perform with nature instead of against it was kind of an
interesting point, you know, the humidity levels that would balance. You're not
trying to keep that out. It just kind of will absorb and re-emit throughout the
day, changing in temperatures. And we live in a very dry climate for the most
part, but we get heavy snow in the winter with large temperature swings during
the day.
Blake Eagle: And so having that thermal mass was also kind of one of the performance sides
that I was interested in just trying to keep the house from, you know, needing a
lot of conditioning for the space and just trying to, you know, I guess we took a
gamble by that time. It was still pretty new and just trusted the salesman. You
know, that's always the hard part for me to trust the sales guys, but in the end it
worked out because everybody's got the best new product, you know, that's
what we see quite often. And, you know, looking into it further and finding that
there were still substructures that it had lasted, you know, hundreds of years
that were still around the planet. And that, that it could be potentially reclaimed
or reused in another building that you can, you know, the, the lifecycle of the
product, I guess, was also appealing.
Blake Eagle: You know, I'm, I'm very curious about what, you know, I hope, I don't know if I
will still be around doing work by then, but all the houses that we are currently
involved in have the hybrid foam foil or a foam and a like a fiberglass blown-in
system. There's not very many that are choosing to go other routes. It seems to
be very standard practice here. Now, a lot of foam homes. And boy, I'll tell you, I
do not want to be the guy that's got to go and remodel those houses for the
next owner, because I don't know where to put all that. There may not be a
disposal area at that time.
Alison Mears: Yeah. I hear you. I hear you. We're pretty anti foam also. So particularly
petrochemically based foams, really problematic products.
Blake Eagle: I mean, I, I get it, they work, they do work, they do their job, but yeah, not, not
my favorite.
Alison Mears: Can you tell us a little bit about your building process? I'm imagining that you
learned a lot kind of on the job as you were building your own home, what
would be the kind of key takeaways for you that you could share during that
process that you could share with others?
Blake Eagle: Well, the biggest thing I guess, was trying to reach out to other people that had
been doing it or had done it and see what they'd learned in their process. At the
time there were only two other houses in the US that had built with hemp. So I
reached out to both of those builders and talked to the code agencies and really
just asked what they would approve. How did they do certain things? You know,
one of the challenges that we faced I guess, was, you know, the electrical was in
a conduit, which wasn't that big of a deal. But it just added a little bit of expense
to run conduit throughout the walls. The, any kind of structural, like the hangers
any kind of the structural steel that was embedded into the system had to be
protected with... They enforced us to use kind of a two-part epoxy instead of an
iron oxide primer, which is what another engineer told us.
Blake Eagle: I guess some of the challenges where you had to assume were we hope this
works process, being that nobody could give us a specific answer on how to
properly detail some of those systems. And since nobody had done it yet, we
were all still trying to learn together with our team and our architect and the
engineer both were very helpful. But you know, the challenges arose and still
had to reach out myself to ask those questions, you know, calling a chemical
engineer, talking about different types of sealers and paints that we could get
away with that was the most, you know, least invasive or friendly, and then
what would be approved. So I think the hardest challenge that we had, there
was nobody, nobody knew what we were doing a hundred percent and
everybody was kinda like, well, this is a mortar-based material.
Blake Eagle: This is what we would recommend in say, cement or concrete. So that was a lot
of what the driver was being that this is, you know, that similar masonry wall
system.
Alison Mears: So interesting, right?
Blake Eagle: It's yeah, very interesting. And you're just, yeah, the reaction of how things,
when you start meshing them together, what's going to happen to those, you
know, we don't want anything to fall down. So we were always very... tried to
do our homework, I guess, and reached out to whoever we could talk to you
about it and what they did and see how it worked.
Alison Mears: Would you, in retrospect have done anything differently, as you know, in terms
of kind of the knowledge that you acquired over the life of the building, as you
look back on the final product, are there, are there things that you would
change now that you kind of know so much more about working with hemp and
lime?
Blake Eagle: Some of the things I would change would probably be not putting the roof on
before the walls were done. That was you know, we were required to get the
house pretty much to cover and dry it in so that we could get an electrical
inspection which was kind of a bummer because we had, we had the window to
put the material in, in the fall. And then by the time the inspectors came over
and said that they would not give us a partial inspection, they wanted to see the
whole system wired up and ready for cover. So we had to move a little further
than I would hope to based on what was allowed. I think now they would
actually let us just put the conduit in and then feed wire later. But at that point,
that was our biggest challenge was having the roof on and detailing the very top
of the wall around all of the roof framing just was time consuming.
Blake Eagle: We had a pretty good system on the mixing and casting. We did a monolithic
pour on site where we just had the bucket brigade and had two people
consistently on the mixers to keep the batches consistent. So having a good
team was, was great. But they weren't there every day, you know, during the
pour people's schedules were conflicting. So I would hire some more part or
yeah, part-time labor for that phase instead of trying to rely on some friends,
family. But we were doing it, you know, for the first time. And it, we ran into
quite a, quite a bit of expense actually on the hemp itself. I mean, it costs the
shipping alone was part of– part of the problem, I guess it was very expensive to
have on site. Originally we were hoping to get the hemp shipped out of Canada.
Blake Eagle: There was a processing facility in Lethbridge, however as we were to order the
material, we were told that they couldn't get that hemp in the States because
we weren't a Canadian entity. So all of our hemp and lime ended up coming
from the UK, which was not what we were hoping just from the carbon
footprint of that alone. So sourcing materials would also be a better, better
avenue at this time. I mean, since then, it's nice to see the changes that have
happened. You know, these things that we were hoping for then are currently in
play so that there, there will be a better supply of materials locally or closer to
where you want to build. So that was, you know, some of those challenges, the
things I would do, any, anything else differently, you know, the house itself is
great. So I love everything about the performance, the feel, just knowing that
there's a healthy material in the wall. It just lives better. So we're actually
considering building another one here this spring. So we'll see how that comes
about.
Alison Mears: That's great. Can you talk, can you dive a little bit more deeply into the kind of
the smell and the feel and the just the overall kind of ambience, the quality of
the interior in your house? Because I know for people who haven't ever been
inside a hemp/lime house, it feels a bit different to a regular house. So I'm not
sure how comfortable you are kind of dwelling on some of that poetic language,
but, you know, if you could give us a sense or a sense of your girls, the way they
describe the house. So, you know, your wife, your partner's responses to it, that
would be really helpful, I think, for, for others to understand.
Blake Eagle: Yeah, I guess you could describe it as earthy in a way, you know, with the...
While the hemp was curing, you know, it did smell a lot like a straw bale or
some sort of a grass that was just harvested, you know, so it had that kind of
natural smell. When you walk into the house, it's very quiet. I feel like the, the
wall definitely helps with deadening of any kind of echoing and sound. We are,
there's a field between us and kind of the highway you know, a few hundred
yards away, but we don't get the highway noise that our neighbors' homes do.
So as far as the quiet performance of the house. When you take a shower, per
se, when you get in the bathroom, it smells like clay, almost like potter's clay.
Because we use a product called American clay and used that on the interior of
the house everywhere we could, except for a little bit of the trim paint.
Blake Eagle: So as far as the house feeling: you walk in, it just kind of feels good, I guess, all,
all around. One thing I would say that I'm not sure if it's tied to the house at all,
but with the kids before all the, this pandemic started, I guess, the kids being in
school and the classroom environment before we moved into the house, were
coming home with colds and runny noses and stuff all the time. And I feel like
that subsided once we'd started living in this home, and I don't know that that's
part of it or not, but we didn't change the school environment or what we were
doing socially. But everybody seemed a little healthier since we've moved in
there. And hopefully that's just from surrounding ourselves with better
materials.
Alison Mears: I would think that's a great hypothesis, don't you?
Blake Eagle: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Living, living with your environment instead of against it.
Yeah.
Alison Mears: Yeah, that makes sense to me. So you said you're working on potentially
building another house that uses hemp lime in it. Can you tell us a little bit
about that?
Blake Eagle: Well, we are just in discussion right now, my wife and I. This, our area has
become a very popular place to move to. So the real estate market is going
crazy currently. And we could pull some equity out of our current home in order
to do it again. A few years ago we purchased the lot next door to us when it
came on the market, just to keep that open space for a little while and plan for
possibly another one. And so we are in discussion right now, whether we're
going to take that step and be homeless again for another year and build a
house. So we're just in the preliminary process. If the house sells then we
would, we would pursue that dream. But if it doesn't happen this year, it will in
the next, we're hoping the next, like, two to three would be our goal.
Alison Mears: That's great. Yeah. Once you get into this house design building process, it's
hard to stop I find.
Blake Eagle: Correct. Yeah. And we don't want to, we don't want to jump in if it's not
happening, just based on how much time we don't have.
Alison Mears: So what's the interest being in, in people who kind of expressed an interest in,
in your house, of visitors. Do people comment on the qualities of the house
when they visit or are they interested in this kind of more alternative
construction system?
Blake Eagle: You know, people that we do have over just, they like everything about it. Our
friends, I guess. It was, it was great to hear the feedback from the Hemp
Symposium, seeing the people for the first time that have never been in a hemp
house, walk in and just go, wow. You know, kind of mind blowing that you could
do pretty much anything on a design realm as well as you wanted. So it doesn't
really limit too much from what you can obtain. You know, one of those
feelings, I guess the comments are just, we use a lot of reclaimed materials,
anything that we could find, obviously trying number one, trying to save money,
number two, reusing something that was going to the dump. We have a building
thrift store here and, you know, you get on their list and they'll call you when
things come up.
Blake Eagle: And there's trophy homes here that get remodeled, you know, on a regular
basis and something that was trendy five to 10 years ago, isn't now, and some
of those folks will do a full swap out or, you know, so it seems like there's always
a source of used materials here. So that was a good part of using a sustainable
material, some reclaimed materials, and just trying to create that, that home
with the least amount of waste. We did qualify for during the time that we built,
there was a grant and a study based on construction waste and our house based
on what we did and reused as much as possible. We produced the least amount
of waste of any project in the county that year. So that, yeah, it makes it feel,
feel good that we tried to do something a little better than, you know, it's, it's
hard to see the construction projects we're on, on a regular basis and the
dumpster after dumpster full of just waste or protection or plastic wraps and
things that come along with that there is a ton of waste currently in the building
world and, you know, changing your materials selection could help that. You
know, there's a lot of variables there, but it is pretty bad just to see the amount
of stuff that goes to the trash every day.
Alison Mears: Yeah. So I'd love a follow-up question on that. What's it going to take to move,
you know, some of these clients away from these, I think you called them foam
homes before foam houses. How are we gonna get hemp lime to become a
viable alternative?
Blake Eagle: You know, I've talked to a few clients about it because I also do some general
contracting. Currently I'm in the kind of focusing in custom cabinet world
because little lower stress. But we've had some people with great interest, but
then it comes down to the building window with a cast-in-place system. That
was, you know, part of the challenge for the scheduling. The expense of it has to
come down and be more readily available and accepted on a local platform
through your building officials. One of the questions we get, we get some
inquiries on a regular basis about it, and nobody has discussed anything with
their local officials, if they can even build a hemp house yet. And some of those
challenges will really be getting the acceptance up to be a standard practice
option, I guess, you know. And that's still going to take some time when people
are used to a certain way and mainly the inspection side. If they don't know it,
they're a little bit timid of it.
Alison Mears: Sure. Yeah. I have a question too, about your schedule. So your construction
schedule, because there is that kind of drying time. That's part of casting this, of
pouring this in situ hemp/lime. What's the window like in Ketchum for building?
When do you typically pour hemp/lime?
Blake Eagle: Yeah. You would want to pour or cast any time the temperature doesn't drop
below 40 degrees, I guess. It's a mortar-based product, so you don't want it to
freeze. So there is potential with tenting that could be done, but generally the
tenting is heated with a propane heater and that puts a lot of moisture back into
the system as well, if you were to do that. So I would say, you know, your
building window would have to be scheduled out where you can start casting in
probably that mid to late spring, ideally. Our house took, we're two story and
ended up casting a 12 inch wall system. And it took a full 90 days at a six inch
probe to reach those moisture contents in order for the stucco to go on for the
render. The original dry time was supposed to be 30 to 45 days. For some
reason it took a lot longer and we had those days that we have great southern
exposure, but we couldn't dry it out too fast. So, you know, you're trying to put
shading up on the scaffolds. So there was some of that that would come up and
down during the day and try to keep the airflow going through. But really your
best building window would be that casting time, you know, mid spring start.
Alison Mears: The earlier in the summer, not too... not mid summer.
Blake Eagle: Yep. And then ideally you would want to get your, your, if you did a render or
however you were doing your exterior finishes, you would allow that first brown
coat, if you did stuccos or renders, to completely dry out as well. So you've got
that sequencing to be mindful of when starting.
Alison Mears: So interesting. Okay. I think we're almost coming to the end of our conversation.
I'm sure you have to hurry back and go back to your regular work. But I had one
final question. Is there anything we haven't discussed that you think is kind of
important for people to understand as we think about, you know, how we
transition from hemp/lime as a bespoke process into kind of more general
acceptance in the construction industry?
Blake Eagle: That's a tough one, I guess. I think you want, you have to want to build a hemp
house would be one thing that I've seen. Definitely those challenges that came
about just getting approval were the hard part. But to see more people get
interested in it, I think seeing more projects in the ground. Then more and more
people just become aware of the possibilities as this starts to, you know, now
it's going to be easier. There is more information becoming available. So with
that available, I think that would that's going to help maybe sway that decision
of how to, how to build your home. So more projects in the ground and more
people with that charge and drive forward to change the building world a little
bit.
Alison Mears: Or a lot, actually.
Blake Eagle: A lot, actually a lot. Yes. Correct.
Alison Mears: To get the small steps we're interested in those big steps.
Blake Eagle: Let's make some big steps. I agree.
Alison Mears: Exactly. Exactly. Well, thank you. Thanks Blake for taking time out of your day to
chat with us. Super interesting to hear your insights and the story of building
your own house and potentially building another one. Excited to catch up with
you if that happens. And just yes. Thanks for spending time with us.
Blake Eagle: Yeah. Well thank you for inviting me on the call. I appreciate it.