We Won the Code. We Have Not Won the Loan.
- Shawn Ledig
- Aug 25
- 14 min read
Five American buildings, one banker in Georgia, an empty insurance file drawer, and the three things this association has to build next
By Shawn Ledig | U.S. Hemp Building Association
Part three of three, second installment. The first ended with Appendix BL in force in three American jurisdictions. That count needs a correction, and it is the first thing below.
Appendix BL is real. It is printed in the 2024 International Residential Code, and it is law today in Austin, Texas and in the City of Surprise, Arizona. That took sixteen years and a fire dataset to earn.
It is not yet law in Maricopa County. The first installment said it was, and I got that wrong. Maricopa County's own public notice for its 11 August 2026 code hearing states that the county "currently enforces the 2018 International Family of Codes and the 2017 National Electrical Code." The 2024 package that adopts Appendix BL in its entirety is still a draft amendment, working its way from the Building Code Advisory Board to the Board of Supervisors, with implementation scheduled for 20 November 2026. Two jurisdictions, not three. I am correcting it here rather than quietly editing the earlier post, because the whole argument of that installment was that our industry repeats counts it has not checked, and I am not going to be exempt from it.
Here is the second half of this chapter, which is harder to write. A code provision tells a plan reviewer what to allow. It does not tell an appraiser what the house is worth, or an underwriter what the wall is made of, or a loan officer whether the file fits the form. France and Britain answered those questions first and reached the code second. We ran the sequence backwards, and this is what that looks like on the ground.
The Sequence We Ran Backwards
France graded the hurd, then wrote the rules. We wrote the rules with no graded hurd.
There is no American equivalent of France's Chanvre Bâtiment quality reference, which fixes granulometry, caps moisture at 19 percent, bounds density and color variation, caps dust at 2 percent passing the 0.25 sieve, and ties a producer's agrément number to the bag. I have not found a comparable American label for construction hurd: no published grading standard, no certification scheme, no audited producer list, no validated binder-and-aggregate couples. A builder in Louisiana and a builder in Montana can buy material with the same name and receive products that behave differently in a wall, and neither has a document to point at.
The best evidence that the gap is real is that ASTM is trying to close it and has not yet. Subcommittee D37.07 opened work item WK96216 on 28 August 2025, a test method whose stated purpose is to sort hurd by particle size distribution, cleanliness and color "into a grading or classification system for the hemp-lime insulation market." A second work item, WK97653, covering mineral binders for hemp construction materials, was initiated on 8 January 2026. Both are still drafts. Nothing has been published. While we wait, I would ask everyone to stop citing ASTM designations that do not exist. Several circulating in vendor literature refer to entirely unrelated things, and a fake standard in front of a plan reviewer costs us more than none.
Meanwhile the French rulebook kept moving. The 2024 edition of the Construire en Chanvre professional rules covers vertical walls up to 28 metres and every category of public-assembly building. Their supply moved too: La Chanvrière reports more than 750 partner producers and 13,000 hectares cultivated around Troyes. Ours is Panda Biotech in Texas, IND HEMP in Montana, South Bend in Kansas, ND, Complete Hemp Processing in South Dakota, CannaVision in Texas, and Delta Agrofiber Solutions in Louisiana. That is a supply chain in its infancy, and thinner than the enthusiasm.
The Buildings That Are Already Standing
The build I keep coming back to is in Wildwood, Georgia, because it answers the question part two raised. Keith and Kate Bien owner-built a two-story house using interlocking dry-stacked hemp block with steel posts and timber beams. Published accounts conflict on its size, and I take that up in the note at the end. What makes it the most important American hempcrete build to date is not the wall. It is the loan.
They financed it through Citizens Bank and Trust in Trenton, Georgia, after their banker, Jon Cole, carried a binder of drawings, costs and timeline to the bank board and argued for it. A community bank had to work outside the standard construction-loan formulas, which are built around stick-built houses. That construction loan converted to a mortgage, and the finished house was insured. All of that is as reported by HempBuild Magazine; I have not seen the loan documents or the policy. One banker, in one small Georgia town, is a large share of our lending precedent.
For scale, look at Newburyport, Massachusetts. The Hillside Center for Sustainable Living is a 12-unit hemp-lime building assembled from 48 tilt-up panels reported at 14 inches thick and roughly 13,000 pounds each, with residents scheduled to move in from February 2025. Hillside describes it as the largest multi-unit hempcrete structure in North America. NESEA, which published a case study on it, uses narrower language, calling it the largest multifamily hempcrete structure in the United States. Either way, if you have been told, as I had been, that America has no multifamily hempcrete, that stopped being true last winter.
Then there is The Raft, at Morton, Minnesota, on the Lower Sioux reservation: a 1,484-square-foot duplex, two one-bedroom units, walls completed in 17 days by a crew of five, spray-cast with Minnesota-grown hemp, for about $200,000 including equipment and supplies. Those figures are this association's own, from our project awards, and the 17 days refers to the walls rather than the whole build. Danny Desjarlais led that crew. A tribal nation is running one of the most advanced hempcrete production crews in the country, and the speed of that placement should embarrass the rest of us.
In Charleston County, South Carolina, architect April Magill of Root Down Building Collective permitted and built a 350-square-foot studio using prefabricated hemp-lime panels detailed for a 150-mph wind zone. Root Down says more than a year of work preceded the permit. The building is instrumented, logging energy performance, moisture movement, humidity and indoor air quality. That building will teach us more than a 3,000-square-foot uninstrumented one.
Out west, the Kirby Nonagon in Ashland, Oregon: 3,800 square feet of 12-inch formed-in-place hempcrete around a nine-sided timber frame with a double reciprocal roof. Its project team calls it the first of its kind permitted in Jackson County and the largest permitted hempcrete building on the West Coast. Both of those superlatives are theirs rather than independent findings, and we should keep attributing them that way. It shared this association's Medium Hemp Project of the Year for 2025 with the Wildwood house.
What Happened in Los Angeles
The project that teaches the most, though, is the one that did not happen.
In January 2025 the Eaton and Palisades fires destroyed more than 16,000 structures between them, by CAL FIRE's count. In the rebuild that followed, a vapor-open material with three one-hour ASTM E119 wall assembly results behind it should have walked straight in. It did not.
On 13 May 2025, architect Ben Loescher and engineer Anthony Dente met with Los Angeles County Public Works. By their account, they were told the department lacked the resources to review proposals using such materials unless those proposals arrived backed by the kind of expensive testing and evaluation reports that mass-manufactured products carry. The county's own people were not dismissive: a deputy director, Luis Ramirez, said the county was not opposed at all to alternative building materials, and a spokesperson, Lisette Guzman, said it would also accept testing from accredited universities and rejected the idea that funding was the obstacle.
Loescher's summary was that the path remained too nebulous to recommend for anyone but someone with the ability to absorb risk in time and cost. In Altadena, homeowners who wanted to rebuild in natural materials went another way, one family to light wood frame and another to straw bale, which is already in the California code.
The county's position has since been stated more helpfully. Its current recovery guidance says that "any alternate materials proposed will be reviewed by our Research Section with an expedited review timeline." That is a real pathway, and it is more than existed in May 2025. It also does not name hemp-lime, and I could find no permitted hempcrete rebuild in the county.
Nothing in that story is anyone's villainy. A county building department with a catastrophic rebuild workload, no adopted appendix, no published material standard and no product certification to lean on made an entirely rational decision.
That is what the absence of infrastructure costs. Not a denial. A shrug, and a homeowner who builds in something else.
The Wall We Have Not Hit Yet, Because Nobody Is Watching
Part two argued that France's real achievement was insurability. So here is the question that should keep this association up at night.
I went looking for a single documented case of an American hempcrete building being denied insurance, failing an appraisal, or being refused a mortgage. Searching the public web, I could not find one. I also could not find a single American insurer or lender that has published a guideline, bulletin, product or filing addressing hemp-lime at all. The closest thing to a public position is a broker's blog post, which says it has markets for hempcrete construction while listing the reasons underwriters balk: no actuarial data, guidelines never updated after the code changed, and outright misclassification of the wall system. That is a broker saying it can place the risk. It is not a carrier's published hemp-lime rule, and it is not a case file.
That is not good news. That is an empty file drawer. A private decline leaves no public trace, so an absence of published cases is not evidence that nobody has been turned down. It is evidence that we are not collecting it.
The pinch point people in the field describe to me is the appraiser, not the code official. Fannie Mae's Selling Guide asks for comparable sales with similar physical and legal characteristics, and it is careful to say comparables need not be identical: where truly comparable sales are unavailable, the appraiser may widen the search area and use the best available sales, provided the selection and adjustments are documented and explained. Read that again, because it is the whole problem. The guide does not forbid our buildings. It hands the outcome to one appraiser's judgment and one appraiser's willingness to write a paragraph defending it, with nothing in the file to help them. When our own builders argued for fire testing, the campaign's stated purpose was to encourage insurers and lenders to support hempcrete projects, which is an admission, in our own words, that they do not yet.
France solved the finance layer through professional rules accepted by insurers and inspection bureaus. Britain solved it through product certification and warranty acceptance. That is my reading of both histories rather than a claim I can hang on an insurer's document, and I would welcome a correction from anyone who has one. What is not in dispute is that we have solved it neither way. We went straight to a model code appendix and left appraisal, insurance and lending to be negotiated one project at a time, by whoever happens to be standing in the room.
What It Takes From Here
This is where the history ends and the work starts. Three things are missing, and none of them is a code provision.
We need a material standard, so that hemp hurd sold for construction in this country means something specific. France proved that a label with published tolerances and a dust limit is not bureaucracy. It is what lets a builder in one state trust a bag from another. ASTM has the work items open. They need people and data, which is a thing members can supply.
We need adoption, jurisdiction by jurisdiction, which is unglamorous committee work in state capitals and county offices. Two jurisdictions in force is not enough. Maricopa County is scheduled for November. Minnesota is in rulemaking, Virginia's decision is expected in December with an October 2027 effective date if it passes, and Washington's local opt-in opens in May 2027. None of those is finished, and California said no for reasons we should understand before the next cycle. The model code side, at least, is settled: ICC published the final action results for the 2024–2026 Group A and B cycle on 22 July 2026, which closes out the 2027 code development process. Publication is still not adoption.
And we need a record. Every American hempcrete project, with its permitting pathway, its appraisal, its insurance carrier, its loan and its problems. Not a gallery of finished photographs. A file an underwriter could read. That is the item every member can act on today. If you have hit a wall with a plan reviewer, an appraiser, an insurer or a lender, tell the association. Right now that experience lives in your head and dies there. Collected, it is the document that changes an underwriting guideline.
France went from one mason's restoration in 1986 to 0.7 percent of its new-build market, a figure reported in late 2024 against roughly 200,000 homes a year, which works out to somewhere near 1,400 houses. We are sixteen years past the Push House in Asheville, the first permitted American home built with hempcrete exterior walls, and we have two jurisdictions where Appendix BL is law today, no material standard, and one banker in Trenton, Georgia. But we have the code text France never got, a fire dataset they do not have, and a crew on the Lower Sioux reservation that can stand up a duplex's walls in 17 days.
That record is what the next stretch of writing on this blog will be built from. The people doing this work, project by project, and what stands in their way. I would rather write those honestly than triumphantly.
The history ends here. In upcoming weeks, I will post one more piece, and it is not history. It is the intake: exactly what we are asking members to send us about their projects, what we will do with it, who will maintain it, and how a builder in a county that has never seen a hemp wall will be able to use it. Three articles to explain how we got here, and then we start building the file we do not have.
Bring Your Questions
If you have built, permitted, financed, insured, appraised, or been turned down on a hempcrete project in the United States, I want to hear from you. That is not a courtesy line at the end of an article. It is the entire point of this one.
The Board is finalizing the date for the next members call and will announce it shortly. When it lands, the finance gap is going on the agenda as a real discussion item rather than a comment at the end when everyone is tired. What we cannot answer live, we will take up here on the blog and in the newsletter.
Send your questions ahead of time so we come prepared with real answers. Use the association inbox, treasurer@ushempbuilding.org, and it will get to me.
Onward,
Shawn Ledig
President, U.S. Hemp Building Association
Shawn Ledig is a structural engineer, President of the U.S. Hemp Building Association, Board Chairman of the Louisiana Industrial Hemp Promotion and Research Advisory Board, and founder of Delta AgroFiber Solutions LLC in Mandeville, Louisiana.
A Note on the Historical Record
The Maricopa County correction is described in the opening rather than buried here, because the first installment carried the error and the count is the thing readers repeat.
The Wildwood house is reported at 2,500 square feet in a 2023 pre-construction account and at 3,000 square feet in a 2026 case study. I have not obtained a permit, certificate of occupancy or appraisal, so no finished figure is printed above. The R-values commonly quoted for that house appear in no published account of it, so they are not printed either. Kate Bien's name also appears as Katie in some accounts.
The Hillside Center's February 2025 date is a scheduled move-in as published, not a certificate of occupancy I have seen, and its North America superlative is the project's own, with NESEA's narrower United States wording noted alongside it. The Kirby Nonagon's Jackson County and West Coast claims are its project team's. I have not found a published completion date for it, so none is given.
The Los Angeles County meeting is reported as the participants described it, with the county's own statements printed alongside, and the county's current alternate-materials guidance added.
Where our literature carries a number, it should carry a source with it.
Sources
Austin City Code § 25-12-241(A), adopting the 2024 International Residential Code and Appendices BA, BB, BF, BI, BJ, BK, BL, BM and BO. Ord. No. 20250410-040, effective 10 July 2025. https://library.municode.com/TX/Austin/codes/land_development_code?nodeId=TIT25LADE_CH25-12TECO_ART4ENCO
City of Austin, Building Technical Codes, 2024 IRC effective 10 July 2025. https://www.austintexas.gov/development-services/building-technical-codes
City of Surprise, Arizona, local amendments adopting IRC Appendix BL in its entirety, effective 1 January 2026. https://content.civicplus.com/api/assets/az-surprise/344d569f-02e5-4c61-a40d-31dbc21580a3
Maricopa County Enhanced Regulatory Outreach Program notice for the 11 August 2026 Building Code Advisory Board meeting, stating the county currently enforces the 2018 codes and the 2017 NEC. https://hsd.maricopa.gov/DocumentCenter/View/122136/Step-5-EROP-AUGUST-11-2026-MEETING-NOTIFICATION
Maricopa County Local Additions and Addenda, draft 2024 IRC amendments adopting Appendix BL in its entirety. https://www.maricopa.gov/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Item/10471?fileID=102475
Maricopa County 2024 building code implementation, 20 November 2026. https://ready.maricopa.gov/DocumentCenter/View/121890/Step-5-K-Maricopa-County-2024-Building-Code-Implementation
Washington State Building Code Council, 2024 code adoption cycle. https://sbcc.wa.gov/2024-code-adoption-cycle
California HCD initial statement of reasons, 2024 triennial cycle, proposing not to adopt Appendix BL. https://www.dgs.ca.gov/-/media/Divisions/BSC/03-Rulemaking/2024-Triennial-Cycle/Public-Comments/BFO-SDLF-HF-45-Day/HCD/HCD-07-24-45-Day-ISOR-PT2_5.pdf
ICC, 2024–2026 Group A and B final action results, published 22 July 2026, closing the 2027 code development process. https://www.iccsafe.org/building-safety-journal/bsj-hits/2024-2026-group-a-and-b-final-action-results-now-available/
2025 Group B IRC monograph, RB291-25 assembly text and the three ASTM E119 test reports. ICC. https://www.iccsafe.org/wp-content/uploads/2025_Group_B_IRC_Building-compressed.pdf
ASTM E119 hemp-lime fire testing and its U.S. Army SBIR funding, with the crowdfunded code-advocacy campaign. HempBuild Magazine. https://www.hempbuildmag.com/home/irc-2027-hempcrete
Référentiel Qualité Chanvre Bâtiment: granulometry, maximum 19 percent moisture, maximum 2 percent passing the 0.25 sieve, density, color and marking requirements. Construire en Chanvre. https://www.construire-en-chanvre.fr/documents/pdf/documentation/ReferentielQualiteChanvreBatimentCenC-ReglesPro_2017.pdf
Règles professionnelles, 2024 edition, vertical walls to 28 metres and all ERP categories. Construire en Chanvre. https://www.construire-en-chanvre.fr/documents/pdf/documentation/PAROIS_VERTICALES-Regles_professionnelles_(2024).pdf
ASTM work item WK96216, test method for industrial hemp hurd particle size distribution, cleanliness and color for a grading or classification system, subcommittee D37.07, initiated 28 August 2025. https://www.astm.org/membership-participation/technical-committees/workitems/workitem-wk96216
ASTM work item WK97653, mineral binders for hemp construction materials, subcommittee D37.07, initiated 8 January 2026, still in draft. https://www.astm.org/membership-participation/technical-committees/workitems/workitem-wk97653
ASTM subcommittee D37.07 jurisdiction and work items. https://www.astm.org/membership-participation/technical-committees/committee-d37/subcommittee-d37/jurisdiction-d3707
IND HEMP hurd for hempcrete, Fort Benton, Montana. https://indhemp.com/hempcrete/
Lone Star Industrial Materials hemp hurd, Waller, Texas. https://www.lonestarim.net/
South Bend Industrial Hemp, Great Bend, Kansas. https://www.southbendindustrialhemp.com/about-industrial-hemp
La Chanvrière, more than 750 partner producers and 13,000 hectares cultivated around Troyes. Grand E-Nov International. https://international.grandestdeveloppement.fr/en/chanvriere-new-production-site-ardennes/
Construction loan for the Wildwood, Georgia hempcrete house: Citizens Bank and Trust, banker Jon Cole, block system, and a planned 2,500 square feet. HempBuild Magazine. https://www.hempbuildmag.com/home/construction-loan-hempcrete-ga
Financing and insuring the Wildwood house, including conversion to a mortgage, and the house described at 3,000 square feet. HempBuild Magazine. https://www.hempbuildmag.com/home/financing-insuring-hempcrete-home
Steel posts, timber beams and block detailing at Wildwood. HempBuild Magazine. https://www.hempbuildmag.com/home/hempblock-master-builder
Hillside Center for Sustainable Living, Newburyport: 12 units, 48 tilt-up panels, and the project's North America superlative. https://www.hillsidecenterforsustainableliving.com/news
Hillside Center move-in schedule, panel thickness and weight, builder and architect. HempBuild Magazine. https://www.hempbuildmag.com/home/hillside-center-for-sustainable-living-to-welcome-residents
Hillside Center case study, described as the largest multifamily hempcrete structure in the United States. Northeast Sustainable Energy Association. https://nesea.org/project-case-study/multifamily-hempcrete-building-newburyport-ma
The Raft, Morton, Minnesota: 1,484 square feet, two units, walls in 17 days, crew of five, roughly $200,000 including equipment and supplies. U.S. Hemp Building Association. https://www.ushba.org/post/hemp-building-association-votes-on-best-hemp-home-2024
Root Down Building Collective, Charleston County: 350-square-foot panelized studio, 150 mph wind zone, and more than a year of work preceding the permit. https://www.gofundme.com/f/hemp-homes-for-southern-coastal-communities
Root Down Building Collective instrumentation and the Charleston Healthy Housing Project. Charleston Magazine. https://charlestonmag.com/features/empowering_communities_root_down_s_quest_for_sustainable_and_equitable_housing_solutions
Kirby Nonagon, Ashland, Oregon: 3,800 square feet, 12-inch formed-in-place walls, nine-sided timber frame, double reciprocal roof, and the project team's Jackson County and West Coast claims. HempBuild Magazine. https://www.hempbuildmag.com/events/hempcrete-workshop-ashland-or-1
2025 Hemp Project of the Year winners, including the Medium category tie between Hemp Healthy Home in Wildwood, Georgia and the Kirby Nonagon in Ashland, Oregon. U.S. Hemp Building Association. https://www.ushempbuilding.org/post/2025-project-of-the-year-winners
CAL FIRE incident record, Eaton Fire: 9,419 structures destroyed, 1,076 damaged. https://www.fire.ca.gov/incidents/2025/1/7/eaton-fire
CAL FIRE incident record, Palisades Fire: 6,845 structures destroyed, 975 damaged. https://www.fire.ca.gov/incidents/2025/1/7/palisades-fire
Los Angeles County meeting of 13 May 2025, the resource statement, and remarks from Luis Ramirez and Lisette Guzman. Los Angeles Times, 28 June 2025. https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2025-06-28/natural-building-materials-wildfires-altadena
Los Angeles County recovery guidance: alternate materials reviewed by the Research Section on an expedited timeline. https://recovery.lacounty.gov/faq/
Comparable sales requirements, including that comparables need not be identical and that an appraiser may expand the search and document adjustments. Fannie Mae Selling Guide B4-1.3-08. https://selling-guide.fanniemae.com/sel/b4-1.3-08/comparable-sales
Insurance broker commentary on hempcrete underwriting: available markets alongside a lack of actuarial data, outdated guidelines and misclassification. Davidson and Associates Insurance. https://www.davidsoninsurance.com/blog/2026/08/building-with-hempcrete-benefits-challenges-and-how-to-get-insured
Hemp-lime at 0.7 percent of French new-build construction against roughly 200,000 homes a year, Philippe Lamarque of Construire en chanvre, November 2024. Batiweb. https://www.batiweb.com/actualites/developpement-durable/le-chanvre-vertueux-du-champ-au-chantier-45521
Martin-Korp Residence, the Push House, Asheville, North Carolina, completed 2010, designed by Push Design. American Lime Technology. http://www.americanlimetechnology.com/martin-korp-residence/
The Push House described as the first permitted home in the United States built with exterior walls of hempcrete, with the Push Design, engineering and contracting team. WNC Magazine. https://wncmagazine.com/feature/design_leap
French revival chronology: 1986 Nogent-sur-Seine, 1998 founding of Construire en chanvre, 2007 provisional professional rules, 2012 acceptance as a current technique. Bâtimétiers 68, Fédération Française du Bâtiment. https://www.ffbatiment.fr/revues-guides/bam/68-septembre-2022/le-chanvre-une-filiere-en-devenir
Another great article Shawn I know that’s a lot of work to put together. Great job!
It’s great to see the USHBA back at it again!