[Strawbale] European Tehnical Approval of strawbale as aconstruction product

Sun Dec 18 20:06:42 CET 2011

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www.strawbalehouse.co.uk - sorry website is out of date but the house is now 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 at siol...>
To: "Jure Požar" <jure.pozar at gmail...>; "European strawbale building 
discussions" <Strawbale at 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 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
>
> HOTEL SPORT &  Biking in Notranjska
> Kolodvorska c. 1, Postojna
> Slovenia
> Tel.: 00386 5 720 22 44
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