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

[Dave Howorth]

On Sun, 2011-12-18 at 22:57 +0100, Max Vittrup Jensen wrote:
> Later the Austrians developed a 'building bale''; fully certified and
> dimensioned according to building needs, not only according to
> available machinery.

Do you happen to have a link to the specification of this bale? I'm
guessing its written in German and my google skills fail me. I'd also be
interested in any description of how such bales are made, except by
using available machinery. The process is too small-scale I think to
justify special machinery.

> I don't know of any case where anyone were not very sensitive to the
> risk of 'out-lawing' owner-builders using locally obtainable bales...

There's another illustration of the differences in building law implicit
in that sentence. Whilst in the UK we have the freedom to choose our
Building Control Officers (inspectors) and whilst the regulations are in
terms of requirements, so we are free to build loadbearing straw bale,
the regulations do NOT make any allowances for owner-builders as they do
in some other countries. Everybody must build everything to the same
standards! Which I think may be one of the things that irritates Donald.