Builder Spotlight: Wade Atteberry Grows It, Processes It, and Builds with It
Second in a USHBA series on the architects, engineers, and builders actually putting hemp buildings up in this country.
By Shawn Ledig, President, U.S. Hemp Building Association
Wade Atteberry does not just build with hemp. He grows it, processes it, and then puts it in the wall.
That makes him rare in this industry. Most hemp builders buy hurd from a supplier and hope the next shipment matches the last one. Wade has spent years on the other end of that supply chain: living at a cotton gin in California’s Central Valley, cutting his own crop, building a spray machine around that material, and testing his ideas in tiny homes he built, lived in, and took apart to see what worked.
He is the founder and CEO of Tiny Hemp Homes and former president of the Hemp Farmers Guild. This summer he served as project manager and lead builder for a landmark workshop at Oregon State University, where nine hemp construction companies came together to train a new generation of builders on a demonstration building that will stand at the university as a permanent example of what hemp can do. I worked beside him on the Dash home in Santa Cruz, and I can tell you the reputation is earned.
From Drywall Crews to Hemp
Wade came to hemp from the trades. He started swinging a hammer at 15. By 18, he was running a drywall company with 36 people on the payroll and had grossed a million dollars.
Then came the hardest stretch of his life. Wade was diagnosed with cancer: a tumor the size of a baseball, attached to his heart. Doctors told him to slow down. Instead, he recovered, restarted the company, and grossed a million dollars again before the cancer returned. He survived that too.
After the 2008 downturn, he ran a granite and natural stone countertop company from a showroom in San Jose, serving kitchens, baths, and commercial restaurants, and later a kitchen and bath company with seven crews and hundreds of completed jobs. Those were lean years, but they taught him how to run crews and how to finish a job the right way. In all that time, he says, his contractor’s license has never had a complaint filed against it.
“We had issues, but I handled them. It’s how you handle an issue.”
His introduction to hempcrete came around 2012 through Chris Boucher, who had been working with hemp for decades. “I’m in construction. That’s what I do,” Wade remembers thinking. By 2015 and 2016 he was all in. He hosted a talk radio show, Wade’s World of Cannabis, and founded Original 420 Brand, one of the earliest CBD and vape companies, which he says reached more than 3,000 smoke and vape shops. He also invented the DeBudder bucket lid, a bucking tool for stripping buds from stems, and later sold the patent.
By 2019, his focus had moved from what hemp could do for the body to what it could do for a house. He founded Tiny Hemp Homes that year.
Growing the Wall
For almost five years, Wade has lived at a working cotton gin in the Central Valley, learning the crop from Tom, a cotton man who has run that gin for 50 years. From 2021 to 2024, Wade also served as business development officer for Western Fibers, which converted a cotton gin in Riverdale, California, to process hemp into fiber, hurd, and building materials.
The first season, on Tom’s 10 acres, produced the best crop they ever grew. The lessons became Wade’s playbook: drip irrigation, about a million seeds per acre (roughly 40 to 45 pounds), and a seed drill set at half an inch. The Central Valley gives him something growers in wetter states can only wish for: no summer rain and 100-degree heat into September, so the crop dries in the field instead of over retting.
Then Wade asked a different question. If you are not decorticating for fiber, why wait for clean hurd as a byproduct? So he grew dense, about 10 to 12 tons per acre, on roughly 100 acres. He cut it with a sickle bar in the second week of September, let it lie and dry for nine or ten days, picked it up with a silage cutter, chop blew it into the truck, and dumped it on the gin floor to be bagged. Fiber, hurd, and dust stay together, and the cost of hauling whole stalks to a decorticator disappears.
As far as Wade knows, nobody else has used silage cut hemp as a building material. I have mixed it with him, and I liked the way it felt and looked. It is a little dusty, but as Wade puts it, once you know how to mix it, that does not matter.
Living at the gin also taught him the economics. Thirty-three farmers own land within two miles of it, and the first two miles of trucking are free. It is the same reason the owners run a second gin nine miles away: you do not want to truck raw material much farther than that. Grow close to processing, and every home built afterward gets cheaper.
That conviction sits at the heart of Tiny Hemp Homes, captured in the company’s own line:
“Yes, we can build our way out of the CO2 climate crisis.”
A System Built for Scale
Wade’s prototype trailers shaped a building system designed from the start for production, not one-off projects.
An interlocking double stud wall. Walls are built on roof truss machines with truss plates. Roof and floor trusses lock directly into the two wall frames, so the shell goes together without a master framer. Wade plans to release the design as open source so any roof truss company can produce the walls from his CAD program, flat pack them, and ship them anywhere.
A spray machine built for silage cut hemp. Wade designed a factory spray system, roughly a quarter million dollar machine, that handles material with the fiber and dust still in it. Sheathing goes up on both faces, a lance drops in from the top, the cavity fills from the bottom up, and then the sheathing comes off. “There’s zero waste,” he says. “When you’re done spraying a wall, there’s not a speck on the ground. It’s all in the wall.” The machine is built and running. Wade estimates that final dial in testing needs about $12,000 and three people for a week.
Hand tamping still works. The same walls can be hand tamped, which keeps the system open to community builds and owner builders.
Off the ground, serviceable, and detailed for plaster. Homes sit on earth screws rather than slabs, so hempcrete never touches the ground. Plumbing runs in a chase and wiring in conduit. Wade has also designed a stainless-steel window frame made for plaster that sheds water away from the opening.
The scale target is ambitious. Wade has raised investment capital and acquired a 70,000 square foot building in the Central Valley, set up to produce about 30 homes a week once it is built out. The homes are 10 feet wide so they can travel by road, in three sizes up to 42 feet long. For larger developments, the production line can be packed into two shipping containers, set up on the project site, and homes rolled straight to their lots.
“Modular home building is the future. We need to catch up with the rest of the world, and we need to do it with carbon negative building materials.”
He sees builders who prefer to work on site moving into remodeling and energy retrofit, and he has a plan for that too. Wade is a fire refugee who was burned out of the Santa Cruz Mountains. His vision includes hemp insulation panels that can be screwed to the outside of an existing house over stucco or vinyl and finished with a plaster coat, improving efficiency and fire resistance in a single trip. As with every hemp builder, documented testing is what turns that potential into something a building official, insurer, or homeowner can rely on.
The Oregon Build
In June 2026, Oregon State University’s Global Hemp Innovation Center, led by Director Jeffrey Steiner, brought together nine hemp construction companies for a five-day Train the Trainer workshop in Corvallis. Organizer John Simonsen, an OSU hemp materials researcher, called it likely the first time that many hemp construction technologies had been demonstrated together in one place in the United States.
As project manager, Wade worked and taught alongside Matt Marino of Homeland Hemp, Sergiy Kovalenkov of Hempire, Cameron McIntosh of Americhanvre, Aaron Grail of Aaron Grail Construction, Mattie Mead of Hempitecture, Dion Lefebvre of 8th Fire Innovations, Gina Engel of Earth Merchant, and Greg Wilson of HempWood. Wade personally invited Aaron Grail to bring his spray rig and work alongside Cameron because, in his words, they are “top of the food chain.” He also brought in a professional camera crew to document the final week, and the build will be featured in a six-part documentary series on industrial hemp.
Eight of the ten trainees were Native American or Native Hawaiian builders and tradespeople, from the Yurok tribe, the Warm Springs Reservation, Stone Child College in Montana, and Hawaii, with training funded by a USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture grant. The goal was not simply to teach ten people. It was to prepare ten people to go home and teach others.
Together they built a demonstration structure combining hemp insulation, wall assemblies, attic insulation, and flooring. It will be permanently installed at the College of Forestry’s Peavy Arboretum and instrumented to record heat load and humidity movement over time, so the building will keep producing data long after the workshop ended. Wade calls leading the program an honor.
Recent Builds
Wade’s recent work shows the other half of his gift: teaching a crew fast and leaving them able to carry on.
The Dash home, Santa Cruz. Built in the Santa Cruz, California forest for Richard Dash and his wife, Patty King. Wade led the build, working alongside USHBA Treasurer Ryan Doherty, USHBA member Ria Murdock, and me.
Santa Barbara. Two tiny homes on trailers. Wade trained the owner and a crew over a single weekend. One home is fully hemped and ready for plaster, the other is about three quarters complete, and the builder is now carrying the work forward on his own.
San Diego. Over the past two years, Wade has worked with a homeowner to completely remodel her home with hempcrete, incorporating her own artistry through mosaics and her unique architectural style.
Harry Hemp’s ADU. Harry and his fast paced crew used Wade’s silage cut hemp to build an accessory dwelling unit in 10 days.
Each of these jobs reinforced a point Wade makes often: biobased walls reward patience. On a recent build he kept several dehumidifiers running full time and planned to probe the wall for moisture before plaster. “People don’t understand what it takes to do this right,” he says. “You have to help nature too. If you got to put in dehumidifiers, then you better know when and how, and how to put airflow.”
The A Team
Ask Wade what separates a newsworthy build from a disappointing one and he will talk about the crew. He has been on too many all volunteer builds where neither the quality nor the speed was there. His core crew is on call and made up of business owners in their own right, including Stephen out of Mexico and Dion from Canada, plus builders he has trained in California.
“We all understand each other. When I go to hit the nail, somebody puts it up as I’m swinging the hammer.”
He has a simple litmus test for a hempcrete crew: you have to have had a bad lime burn already. “You have to respect the lime,” he says. “If you don’t respect the lime, you’re going to get burned. And if you get burned, then you’re useless on a job after week one.” He is not a 12 hours a day, 12 days in a row boss, but he is not above a long day when the schedule demands it.
Teaching the Next Builders
Teaching has always been part of Wade’s work. His early courses ran in Ventura, California, with a nonprofit organization, and in Boulder Creek in the Santa Cruz Mountains. In spring 2023, he helped students at Cal Poly Humboldt build the first hempcrete demonstration wall at the Campus Center for Appropriate Technology. This August, USHBA was proud to support his Hempcrete Round House Workshop in Bonny Doon, California.
Now he is shifting more of his energy to education. Wade is developing a green building workforce development school built around eight week, live in cohorts at about $10,000 per student, a price point that workforce grants can support. He would like to buy 40 acres in Humboldt County for an off grid campus, and may launch first in Los Angeles with a corporate sponsor. Students will build tiny homes on the property as part of the curriculum.
He learned an important lesson from an earlier eight week course where many students were there only to complete required hours. Every applicant to his school will interview first. “I only want people that want to do this,” he says.
He is also planning a high end demonstration event in California, modeled on the OSU workshop: one day, with expert crews showing block walls, hand tamping, spray application, and his double stud framing to leading architects, designers, builders, and public officials. He expects it to take about nine months to plan once partners commit.
Wade has also proposed a USHBA certified teacher program, in which the board would vet experienced instructors and allow them to teach under the association’s name. He says he would gladly pay annual dues for that credential. It is exactly the kind of idea the association looks forward to exploring with its members.
Looking Ahead, Including Louisiana
What stands between tiny hemp homes today and hemp homes at scale? Wade does not hesitate. “Only funding. Funding will overcome anything.”
Permitting is the other frontier. Most of Wade’s work to date has been tiny homes on wheels, demonstration builds, and owner builder projects, with a permitted home in Hopland among the exceptions. That is changing. With code pathways like IRC Appendix BL and engineers stamping hemp lime projects, permitted builds are coming.
Some of them will be in Louisiana. Delta AgroFiber Solutions, Hyperion Group, and Tiny Hemp Homes are planning to work together on hempcrete projects in the state, including a university build and permitted homes in 2027, with Wade’s crew leading hand tamped community builds. More details will be announced soon.
What Builders Can Take From Wade
Hire a real consultant. “Hire an experienced consultant, not somebody who just says they are. Go vet them out. Go to the USHBA and ask who they recommend.”
Know your feedstock. Hurd quality changes the mix, the cure, and the wall. Learn the material before you build with it.
Grow close to processing. Trucking distance is a cost every future home pays.
Manage moisture on purpose. Dehumidifiers, airflow, and patience before plaster are part of the job, not optional extras.
Build with a crew that has done it before. Experience shows up in quality, speed, and safety.
Teach as you build. Every person trained well is another crew that can carry this work forward.
The Work Behind the Wall
The hemp building industry still has very few people who can speak with authority about every step from seed to finished wall. Wade Atteberry is one of them. He has grown the crop, processed it, engineered a way to build with it at scale, and taught others to do the same, from Ventura and Boulder Creek to Corvallis and Santa Cruz.
“Ninety percent of the people in this industry, I’ve got their back and they’ve got mine,” he says. After years of building this industry from the ground up, he is in a hurry to give back. “I just feel like years are burning,” he told me. Knowing Wade, he will not waste a single one.
Know a builder, architect, engineer, or material innovator who belongs in this series? Get in touch with the U.S. Hemp Building Association.
Onward,
Shawn Ledig
President, U.S. Hemp Building Association
Disclosure: The author is a principal of Delta AgroFiber Solutions and Hyperion Group, which are named in this article as planned project partners of Tiny Hemp Homes.
Sources
Interview with Wade Atteberry by Shawn Ledig, U.S. Hemp Building Association, October 2026
Wade Atteberry, “Tiny Hemp Homes w/Wade Atteberry,” recorded talk, February 2025
HempBuild Magazine, “OSU Hosts First Multi Technology Hemp Construction Workshop,” June 2026
Jim Souers, LinkedIn post on the OSU Train the Trainer course, May 2026
National Center for Appropriate Technology, “Learning from Western Fiber,” 2021
Appropedia, “CCAT Reclamation Station 2023,” Cal Poly Humboldt
UpCodes, IRC 2024 Appendix BL, Hemp Lime (Hempcrete) Construction
U.S. Hemp Building Association, Hempcrete Round House Workshop announcement, August 2026
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