Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
getting building permit approval in new locales.This sharing takes place in
articles such as those which make up the special edition of
The Last Straw,
formal presentations and informal conversations at workshops and “green
building” conferences, web-site postings, and personal email messages.
Aware that “how research and testing are conducted will affect how build-
ing codes are written and consequently determine how accessible and
affordable [straw-bale] building will be,” Eisenberg, together with others,
formed BRAN (Bale Research Advisory Network) “to coordinate and
maximize the effectiveness of this work.”
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Virginia Carabelli's house near Tesuque, New Mexico, built in 1991, was
the first insured, bank-financed straw-bale structure and also the first built
with a building permit. Having granted Carabelli's permit, the State of New
Mexico Construction Industries Division issued ten experimental permits
for non-load-bearing straw-bale structures. About the same time, the Straw
Bale Construction Association was organized in Santa Fe, bringing together
professionals committed to straw-bale design and building. This activist
group successfully sponsored a small-scale fire test and transverse load test
for straw-bale building and succeeded in getting straw-bale construction
guidelines into New Mexico building codes. Such testing and cooperative
work with building officials in New Mexico followed similar efforts in
Tucson. There, Eisenberg, Myhrman, and Knox worked closely with local
officials to coordinate a structural wall testing program conducted by an
engineering graduate student named Ghailene Bou-Ali for his master's the-
sis in structural engineering at the University of Arizona.
Each building permit office has its own culture, depending on its geo-
graphical region and its local personality and leadership, as David A. Mann,
Codes Administrator for the City of Tucson, pointed out when asked by
Eisenberg about the impression of straw-bale building on building officials
given its long history but limited amount of quantified testing data:“Every
building department, like any other organization, has a culture. Some
depend on facts and calculation, others are more interested in construction
community input, and still others are interested in what other departments
are doing. My advice would be to have information on all of the above: cal-
culations, test results, local designer and builder interest, and local jurisdic-
tions that have straw-bale experience.”
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Fortunately, the broader building culture of Tucson, where building
officials were already accustomed to adobe building as an alternative to
