For the first time, EBANZ hosted their annual conference in Christchurch city / Otautahi, at the foot of the port hills.
On the 9th and 10th of November 2024, 60 enthusiastic people attended the conference, many of whom were involved in some kind of activity towards making the conference a great success.
Some of the highlight speakers and workshops included Antione-Tane and Kirstie Wulf on hempcrete, Verena Maeder and Scotty on light earth bricks and how to test the suitability of your earth and clays. Graeme North gave an update on the Earth Building Standards and how the 2024 standard updates are soon to be released. He also presented some of the historic buildings in the area; the Cracroft Guiding center venue had a special significance to our association, as there was once a large earth brick building. It could have been repaired after the earthquakes, however the stakeholders decided to remove the building.
The presentations this year had an emphasis on carbon accounting. Unitec professor Min Hall and Masters student Sinead McClay presented a series of carbon accounting tests, using the same building but with a change in wall system, one of which was strawbale. This was tested with two different carbon accounting programs. In both examples, the strawbale house had the best results for reducing embodied carbon.
The house tours featured a number of strawbale houses; two lived in and loved, and one that was under construction with all the materials and tools available to see. A highlight on the tour was one earth brick house that had been repaired with little difficulty after the Canterbury 2011 earthquakes.