Location: Hazelbrook, Blue Mountains NSW
Completed: 2021
Designer: Kirstie Wulf, Shelter Building Design
Featured: Sustainable House Day 2026 · BDAA National Awards (Commendation)
When bushfire risk is your starting constraint, most builders reach for brick, steel, or fibre cement. Brett and Lisa Hoare reached for hemp.
Their home in Hazelbrook, a village nestled in the mid Blue Mountains, sits in a Bushfire Attack Level Flame Zone (BAL FZ), the most extreme fire hazard classification in Australia. The design brief was clear: non-combustible. But the owners wanted something more than fire resistance. They wanted a home that would use less energy, tread lightly on the planet, and actually feel good to live in. Hempcrete delivered on all three.
The result is the Hazo Hempcrete House, a two-storey, cast-in-situ hempcrete home that earned a commendation at the BDAA National Awards and is now opening its doors as part of Sustainable House Day 2026 on Sunday 17 May.
The Design: Two Pavilions, One Courtyard
Designed by Hazelbrook-based building designer Kirstie Wulf of Shelter Building Design, the 149.7m² home makes smart use of its 742m² north-facing suburban block. Rather than arranging rooms in a conventional linear sequence, the design separates the sleeping quarters from the living areas into two distinct pavilions, connected by a private, sun-drenched courtyard in between.
The effect is one of quiet logic: bedrooms at the front of the block shield occupants from street noise, while the living areas open northward to passive solar gain and outdoor flow. The courtyard, carved out between the two forms, becomes the heart of the home. It’s a planning strategy that rewards both wellbeing and thermal performance.
The material palette is deliberately grounded: hempcrete walls cast in-situ around a timber frame, a Colorbond roof, concrete slab-on-ground with slab edge insulation, and double-glazed aluminium windows. And then, set into one of the hempcrete walls, a circular port-hole “truth window” a small framed aperture left unrendered to reveal the raw hempcrete texture beneath. It’s a beautiful detail, and a telling one. This house isn’t hiding what it’s made of.
Why Hempcrete in a Flame Zone?
Hempcrete has a BAL FZ rating: it is non-combustible. But its case for use in bushfire-prone areas goes further than that single credential.
Unlike most fire-resistant cladding systems, hempcrete also provides genuine thermal mass and insulation in a single material. It is vapour-permeable, meaning the walls breathe and self-regulate humidity rather than trapping moisture behind membranes. It contains no petrochemical binders, no synthetic additives, and no off-gassing components. In a region already under environmental pressure, these qualities matter.
The lime component in hempcrete continues to mineralise and absorb atmospheric CO₂ long after construction is complete, making hempcrete walls an act of ongoing carbon sequestration embedded into the structure of the home itself.
For the Hoares, the material wasn’t a compromise. It was the answer.
Building It Together
One of the most distinctive aspects of this project is how it was built. During construction, the Hoares ran community workshops, inviting volunteers to come and learn the hempcrete process, mixing, pouring, tamping, while actually raising the walls of the home. At peak sessions, teams were achieving 28 or more hempcrete mixes in a single day, each mix contributing another layer to the growing walls.
This approach reflects something important about hempcrete as a material: it is accessible. It doesn’t require heavy machinery or specialist trades to the degree that conventional construction does. It can be learned and taught on-site. And in learning it, participants walk away with a felt, embodied understanding of what natural building actually involves, not just a brochure claim about sustainability, but the texture of it in their hands.
Living in It
Since completion in 2021, the home has demonstrated what hempcrete advocates have long argued: a well-designed hempcrete house doesn’t need much help staying comfortable. The thick walls act as a thermal buffer, absorbing warmth during the day, releasing it slowly through cooler nights, reducing or eliminating the need for mechanical heating and cooling across much of the year.
In the Blue Mountains, where temperatures swing significantly between seasons and altitude makes cold winters the norm, this performance is not incidental. It is the point.
Recognised and Now Open
The Hazo Hempcrete House received a commendation in the BDAA National Awards, recognition that affirms both Kirstie Wulf’s design skill and the broader case for hempcrete as a material worthy of the mainstream construction conversation.
Now, for Sustainable House Day 2026, the Hoares are opening the doors again — this time to the public.
[Watch the Sustainable House Day walkthrough video below]
If you’re anywhere near the Blue Mountains on Sunday 17 May, this is one of the most tangible ways to understand what a hempcrete home actually looks, feels, and performs like. Tickets are available through Sustainable House Day.
A Blueprint for What’s Possible
The Hazo Hempcrete House is more than one family’s home. It is evidence — built, inhabited, and now demonstrated publicly — that hempcrete can meet Australia’s most demanding fire safety requirements while delivering thermal comfort, material health, and genuine carbon storage.
It is also evidence of what becomes possible when an experienced designer, committed owners, and a willing community combine around a shared vision for better building.
The hemp is in the walls. The warmth is in the outcome.
Kirstie Wulf is a listed designer in the Hemp Building Directory. If you’re planning a hemp building project in NSW or beyond, explore our directory of designers and builders who specialise in hempcrete construction.
Disclaimer
HBD do not warrant the quality or experience of anyone listed on this directory.
We have relied on the information provided by the business and its representatives.
This site is not intended to provide and does not constitute building advice, or other professional advice.
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