Re: Code Enforcement

[Nehemiah Stone <nistone@energy.ca.gov>]

strawbale-digest wrote:
> 
> strawbale-digest      Saturday, January 25 1997      Volume 01 : Number 738
> 
> Messages in this digest:
>  Re: Several Responses
>  Re: Cooling Tower/Solar Chimney & websites - Long
>  Villa ... Coop
>  Building Officials
>  Re: Insulated Slabs/Foundations & XPS
>  FPSF's
>  Fine Homebuilding
>  CMHC Ecovillage material in Calgary
>  One more building dept. post (my last)
>  pinning the top course of bales
>  Roof Anchoring vs. Wall Pre-Compression
>  how to win friends and influence people...
>  Re: building dept. , fire resistence and resale value
>  re:Roof Anchoring vs. Wall Pre-Compression
>  Re: particulars
>  Re: particulars
>  One more building dept. post (my last)
>  pinning the top course of bales
>  [Fwd: How Specs Live Forever]
>  Re: Building Officials
>  Re: Roof Anchoring vs. Wall Pre-Compression
>  Re: building dept. , fire resistence and resale value
>  re. building inspectors
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Date: Fri, 24 Jan 1997 09:04:11 -0500
> From: "J.L. Mulligan" <mulligan@erols.com>
> Subject: Re: Several Responses
> 
> At 12:02 AM 1/24/97 -0600, you wrote:
> 
> >       People, especially when there was a larger percentage of rural population,
> >seemed to have had a much better working knowledge of the guts of life,
> >including how to grow things and how to build things. It was just a part of
> >a way of living (like credit cards are now). I understand that a chicken
> >coop isn't the Taj Mahal (or even a Palladian Villa [Pat says, "what?
> >what?"])... but I'm more inclined toward a chicken coop aesthetic, personally.
> >
> 
> I looka at a straw bale housing of more of a Pallidum Villa than a chicken coop.
> 
> ------------------------------
> 
> Date: Fri, 24 Jan 1997 12:32:59 -0300
> From: Joel Peters <airmusic@netup.cl>
> Subject: Re: Cooling Tower/Solar Chimney & websites - Long
> 
> At 01:36 PM 1/23/97 -0800, DTT wrote:
> 
> ...The solar chimney, is great for providing ventilation. It works on the
> >principle that hot air rises...
> 
> It's my understanding from reading this that the advantage of the swamp
> cooler/solar chimney combination is that the solar chimney simply increases
> the evacuation of the cooler humid air introduced by the s.c.. Is this correct?
> 
> Regarding the water wall concept...
> 
> I saw an entire wall, in a geothermally heated greenhouse in Lake County,
> CA, which was really just a very large version of swamp cooler fiber panels
> in 2 dimensions instead of being built like a box. The other end of the
> green house had a large extractor fan so that essentially the whole
> greenhouse was the inside of a large swamp cooler. Don't know how applicable
> this would be for homes, since I imagine the humidity was fairly high inside
> the greenhouse. Made a lot of sense to me, though. and the cooling was
> impressive. Summertime temperatures in Lake County often reach 115 F. and
> the ambient humidity is quite low, so this system was incredibly effective.
> I have seen the outside air cooled as much as 30 degrees by swamp coolers. I
> tried using one in my computerized graphic arts business, but encountered
> endless humidity problems with laser printers and photocopiers (mainly
> because the paper absorbed the humidity readily, but also because powdered
> toners used in these machines absorb moisture) I can't help wondering if a
> solar chimney would have helped solve this problem.
> 
> Joel
> 
> ------------------------------
> 
> Date: Fri, 24 Jan 1997 10:28:11 -0600
> From: duckchow@ix.netcom.com
> Subject: Villa ... Coop
> 
> At 09:04 AM 1/24/97 -0500, J.L. Mulligan wrote:
> 
> >I look at a straw bale housing of more of a Pallidum Villa than
> >a chicken coop.
> 
>         Yeah, you're right, of course. I threw in that parenthetical comment as an
> inside joke for the winking-smiley benefit of a certain art historian on
> the list, and in retrospect it was at the expense of the point I was making.
> 
>         My remarks were a (failed attempt to) comment on the differences between a
> mindset of flat, precise, harsh & palatial vs organic, flowing, soft &
> comfortable. The model for the chicken coop is the one my grandparents
> built (you've all been there, right? -grin- ) way back before the dawn on
> time (assuming here that time began with my birth).
> 
>         It's a big one, about 12'x40', and I swear they didn't use a plumb bob
> (let alone a sense of direction) when they built it. It's a stick-built
> frame with cement-plastered lath on the interior and exterior, roofed with
> wood shingles. A sturdy thing of simple beauty.
> 
>         That's what I had in mind when I was contrasting the Taj Mahal with a
> chicken coop. A more appropriate contrast, rather than that mausoleum,
> would have been any generic soulless aluminum-sided tract house.
> 
> ------------------------------
> 
> Date: Fri, 24 Jan 1997 08:57:01 -0800
> From: Bill Currier <bill.currier@westernasset.com>
> Subject: Building Officials
> ... though I have no direct exposure to building dept. graft, it
> doesn't take a rocket scientist to read the papers and see building
> inspectors (and health inspectors, and ...) being exposed, reprimanded,
> fired, charged, and convicted over the years, all over the nation.
> (Come to think of it, I have seen health dept. graft in one town.)<snip>
> Political purposes?  Go to the papers again.  Anywhere the local
> political hacks can take a nepotic tuck here and there, they will.  Look
> at the building dept. staffs in any major city.  Who's related to whom?
> Who has worked in whose campaigns?  Who's contributed what?
> 
> Simple stuff obvious to anyone. <snip>

I guess I'm too simple.  It ain't obvious to me.  I personally know over 
two dozen people in building departments; not one of them is married or 
otherwise related to anyone else in their government; are decent honest 
folkes; and generally have the same mix of political leanings as the 
general population around them.  Saying that graft and ineptitude is 
rampant in building, planning and health departments doesn't make it so.
  
>But it's also true that some places are
> as clean as others are corrupt.  I'm from Massachusetts where a certain
> level of corruption has always been and probably will continue for a
> time yet.  "Townie" family, business, and political connections in the
> smaller towns are widely understood and undeniable, while the real
> criminal stuff has pretty much been confined to the cities, especially
> Boston.  Similarly, RI has a reputation for corruption, while Vermont is
> reputed to be fairly clean, as one example.
> 
> It's not paranoia, it's not blind attitude or self-serving, self-pitying
> justification, bull-headedness, or anything else.  It's reality.  
> <snip>

It isn't my reality.  I find the people I deal with in government to be 
just like the people I deal with elsewhere.  Some are grindingly 
annoying, but they are a very small minority.  Most are helpful, honest 
and as gratified by doing their best as I find that I am.

> Bill Currier
> Date: Fri, 24 Jan 1997 12:42:58 -0800
> From: Bill Currier <bill.currier@westernasset.com><snip>
> The building dept. in the city in which I work is notoriously difficult
> to deal with (though honest as far as I know).  When we put out our last
> office expansion contract to bid, a couple of the G.C.s we invited to
> bid wouldn't even consider it because of the potential for
> inspection-related difficulties to disrupt other jobs.  Code literalists
> to the max.<snip>

> By the way, I currently live in a tract in California.  After the
> Northridge quake, many of the houses in the tract were found to have
> major code violations leading directly to major damage, from soil/site
> compaction to the roof systems' nailing specs, though every one of them
> was inspected multiple times throughout the building process.  <snip> 
> The neighbor across the street had large portions of his roofing slip;
> only about a quarter of his roof tiles were nailed, though the schedule
> called for nailing every course.  Almost all the pre-cast chimneys in
> the development were either never strapped into the structures at all,
> or, as in my own house, the anchors were nailed into the plywood webs of
> the floor trusses.<snip>
> 
> Several houses had cantilevered structures fail - the builder had made
> un-engineered, un-approved changes that (surprise) passed inspection.
> Some of the houses were found to lack required sheathing in critical
> walls, others had inadequate wall surface for structural support of 2nd
> stories because of excessive window coverage.  Some were missing the
> required seismic anchors for the walls.  The list goes on.
> 
> So I've got some personal experience with the "protection" that the code
> and inspection process provides.  Good code.  No protection.  The
> failures extended from plan review to final inspection, at every level.
> But I probably just have an "attitude" and am just not treating the
> inspectors with due respect.
> 
> Bill Currier

  I don't see how building departments could do anything but fail that 
kind of test.  If they inspect the nailing patterns they are "code 
literalists to the max."  If they don't and the event for which those 
requirements were written happens, they are "failures ... from plan 
review to final inspection, at every level."  I really don't mean to be 
harsh Bill, but it is likely that many people who have not had too many 
dealings yet with building departments may begin to form their opinions 
of who these folks (building inspectors) are based partly on our 
portrayal of them.  The truth is, they are just people, like all others. 
 What you get from them is more related (though admittedly, not entirely) 
to what you give than anything else.  I have had truck drivers be rude to 
me while engaged in their profession too; sometimes it was directly 
related to the fact that I "demanded" my right of way, but other times, I 
assume, it had nothing to do with me [bad hair day].  By the way, I too 
have seen dramatic failures in buildings due to the forces of earthquakes 
and resulting from lax application of the code.  I have also seen 
businesses fail because of economic downturns, and resulting from poor 
work habits of the company's employees. ;-)
nis