[Strawbale] European Tehnical Approval of strawbale as a construction product

[Michel Van Mulders]

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 Požar 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 at 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 Požar dipl. org. tur. / general manager
> 
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