Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
construction industry practice, set a precedent of open-mindedness for
innovation with highly placed building officials. Leroy Sayre, the Chief
Building Official of Pima County, Arizona, has stated that, when Matts
Myhrman came to his office to see if he would be receptive to the idea of
allowing straw-bale buildings in the county, he had wondered “Is this guy
really serious?” But after reflection, he began to see the similarity between
bales and other building blocks such as brick, concrete, and cinder.The test-
ing done by Bou-Ali, even though merely for a master's thesis and even
though “relatively primitive” according to Sayre, was accepted as “showing
that the material could withstand the wind loads, and to a certain degree
the seismic loads anticipated by the building code” and “became the basis
for the development of prescriptive standards in the building code for the
use of straw bales as a construction material.”
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Even so, it took 3 years of
innumerable meetings and multiple rewrites before the written standard
was acceptable to the code review committee. The standard was approved
and added to the 1994 Pima County/City of Tucson Uniform Building
Code as Appendix Chapter 72. On January 2, 1996, Pima County's Board
of Supervisors and Tucson's mayor and city council adopted the 1994 edi-
tion of the Uniform Building Code, with Appendix Chapter 72, allowing
the use of straw bales as load-bearing walls for single-story buildings.
Illustrative of the differences in building office cultures and political cli-
mate, the Board of Supervisors of Napa County, California, adopted the
standards from the Tucson/Pima County code as an amendment to their
building code, though the Building Department staff report had recom-
mended against it. The supervisors felt that the standards were sufficiently
developed and that the history of straw-bale construction adequately
ensured safe outcomes, so that if plans had an engineer's stamp of approval
they were acceptable. Nolo and Glenn counties in California followed suit.
This is not to say that every straw-bale project has met with success in
dealing with building officials.The straw-bale Montessori School wall rais-
ing planned for the Natural Building Colloquium East had to be canceled
because building officials of Davidsonville, Maryland, refused to even look
at the compilation of materials amassed to date and the school subsequently
was forced to chose another building technique. While public-oriented
structures such as schools, even private ones, may have more of a challenge,
independent home builders have been paving the way in testing codes
along with a few enterprising independent businesses.
