GOOIK

Construction with beer production waste

"GOOIK" is the construction of a single-family house for the farm Bree-Eik, which produces beer, and other products. The project experiments with circular construction techniques: the load-bearing walls are made of compressed earth bricks, the window frames are made of wood from local sawmills, and the insulation material, moreover, is being developed specifically for this project. BC materials was asked to develop an insulating material from hop vines from the farm's agricultural activity. Hop vines are a by-product of beer cultivation. Only the hop cones are harvested and the rest of the plant is burned or sometimes discarded as compost. BC materials proposes to investigate two waste products of beer production to integrate them into the development of innovative building materials: on the one hand, the hop vine, which thanks to the nature of its fluted fibers possesses similar insulating properties to hemp, and on the other hand beer brew or draff, small fibers that contain cellulose residues and are interesting for the production of clay or lime plaster.

Materials developed by BC materials : Hopcrete for Gooik