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Re: [Strawbale] European Tehnical Approval of strawbale as aconstruction product



My heart is with Donald because rules can only be written around what is known so, by definition, they bar anything new. One could call him unreasonable but a reasonable man adapts himself to the world around him whereas an unreasonable man tries to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends upon the unreasonable man - so we need more Donalds. In the UK certain people (with a vested interest) have an unhealthy appetite for excessive regulation and nannying but, as far as building regulation is concerned, we do have the option to employ an independent building control. This is not a "get out of jail free card" because they have their careers on the line but it does mean one can find a more sympathetic inspector. This is what I had to do after my local building control refused to have anything to do with strawbale building (they are convinced my stawbalehouse will spontaneously combust at any moment). The only touble I have is that my building control is 350 miles away!
all the best to everyone for the festive season
Brian
www.strawbalehouse.co.uk - sorry website is out of date but the house is now finished.

----- Original Message ----- From: "Michel Van Mulders" <michelvanmulders@siol...> To: "Jure Poľar" <jure.pozar@gmail...>; "European strawbale building discussions" <Strawbale@amper....muni.cz>
Sent: Sunday, December 18, 2011 3:10 PM
Subject: Re: [Strawbale] European Tehnical Approval of strawbale as aconstruction product


Hi Jure,

You could also look at this subject from another point of view;

Part from load-bearing, there are several other ways to use strawbales and it is easier to get approval. Load-bearing, "Nebraska style" was used, I believe because of a lack of resources, i.e. wood for load-bearing. (and money) Today, I guess the cost will not be lower and therefore not a reason to choose for load-bearing. (unless you get free 2 busses of workshop enthusiasts that come and build your house for free)

However attractive it is to choose for load-bearing, it is still seldom used.

What would be the reason to get this in mainstream, while not load-bearing is getting accepted more and more?

Regards,

Michel.


On 18 dec. 2011, at 15:24, Jure Poľar wrote:

Hi everyone,

Thank you for your aspects. I totally agree with you and I despise the
bureaucrac our country makes every day to make things hard or
impossible. The problem I came to in my research for the masters study
is if we have standards or technical regulations for strawbale as a
building brick in our country (Slovenia). Of course I have to struggle
to get over all the red tape and among this sea of data I found ETA
which would be the end of my anaysis if such thing for strawbale would
exits on a EU level. My prediction is that such thing doesn`t exist.
However if we get to real life. I presume you could probably build a
loadbearing strawbale house in Slovenia for yourself, but when you
come to public buildings the regulations are much more strict where
everything have to be done after legislation, laws and regulations.
Has anybody expirience with building loadbearing strawbale building
without sufficient legislature. How have you obtained buidling permit?
Did you have to do certification through different tests, like they
did it in Austria and Czech rep. or is there any middle way (so the
local authorities recognize foreign test as plausible and give a
stamp). I am going to have a talk to the representative of goverment
tomorrow (director of regional goverment administration) to see what
are his views regarding this topic. I mean if strawbale building wants
to become mainstream it needs to be backed up with regulations as
well, otherwise authorities can come to diffent decisionsin the same
country about the same matter (it comes to the fact if the person
involved is educated enough in this field of construction or if he is
sympathetic about the idea than he will give it a go, otherwise not).
I know there are different stories about achieveing this perspectives
in each country but any new info would be helpfull. We have just a
handfull of strawbale buildings in Slovenia and none of them is
loadbaring. If I could do anything that could help push loadbaring
strawbale building towards the mainstream I will give my best.
Normally this is not a start, but when people ask you questions if you
surely get a permit for this kind of building and you don`t have the
answer it is not good news.

This is my point of view

Jure Pozar / sLOVEnia Strawbale Building

2011/12/18 donald mchardy <fieryx@hotmail...>:

if I choose to build SB or anything else on my land using my money and
resources then the standard of build quality ie if it collapses after a week
or stays up for 300 years,  is no-one's business except mine.

The UK is awash with standards ... and build quality tends to be woeful. I
set my own standards and I have to live with them.

jm2pw



standards?? straw bale is *easy* to build with.



But still you can have high-quality and low-quality straw constructions.
Standards are a way of agreeing on what constitutes high quality, and in my opinion are necessary to get straw building into mainstream. (I'm commenting
on standards in general, I have no idea how ETA works.)



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--
Jure Poľar dipl. org. tur. / general manager

HOTEL SPORT &  Biking in Notranjska
Kolodvorska c. 1, Postojna
Slovenia
Tel.: 00386 5 720 22 44
Fax:  00386 5 720 22 40
Mobile: 00386 41 268 428
www.sport-hotel.si
www.dos-extreme.si
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   European strawbale building discussion list

Send all messages to:
Strawbale@amper....muni.cz

Archives, subscription options, etc:
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____________________________________________________
   European strawbale building discussion list

Send all messages to:
Strawbale@amper....muni.cz

Archives, subscription options, etc:
http://amper.ped.muni.cz/mailman/listinfo/strawbale
____________________________________________________