Re: Code Enforcement

[Strawnet@aol.com]

I'll toss in my two cents on this one too.  I have to agree more with 
Nehemiah about building officials.  Those of you who have read the DCAT 
working paper, Straw Bale Construction and the Building Codes, know what 
my position is about this topic.  I can sum it up in a few sentences, and 
I will, but first I want to say it is based on nearly twenty years in 
construction, much of it building things that pushed the building 
officials out of their normal comfort zone.  I also built a lot of 
standard things.  I always tried to be honest and direct with building 
officials and inspectors.  Mostly, I view them as resource people, with 
knowledge and the authority to help me through problems that might come 
up.  This approach allowed me to have exactly two bad experiences with 
inspectors in all these years.  That is not to say that I always agreed 
with the judgement of the inspectors or the building officials, or didn't 
have to occasionally do something I thought was overkill or just plain 
dumb.  But that doesn't constitute a bad experience in my book.  I've had 
more trouble over the years with retail sales people, mechanics, 
insurance adjusters, doctors, and school officials than I ever had with 
building officials (not that I have much of a history of problems with 
any of them either).  My point is that your attitude is the most 
influential aspect of the relationship you develop with your building 
officials.  I am not naive enough to suggest that there won't be many 
people who have negative experiences that are not of their own creation.  
But I have been dealing with building officials all over the country, in 
relation to straw bale construction, including going to their large 
meetings, and my experience has been overwhelmingly positive.  I try very 
hard not to exaggerate, hide the problems or unknowns, or pretend to know 
more than I know.  And I have developed many deep friendships with 
building officials as a result of this.  Building officials and 
inspectors are subject to the same range of human characteristics, 
experiences, personalities and attitudes as the rest of us.  No better, 
and in my experience, no worse than any other segment of the population.

As for building codes and the potential problems of developing them for 
straw bale construction or other alternatives, check the archives and 
back issues of The Last Straw for my past postings on the subject over 
the past couple of years.  And you should also know that the focus of 
much of my attention these days is on the issue of sustainability and 
building codes - working to introduce an external context for codes - to 
resources, economic impact, cultural and social impact, and especially 
environmental impact.  As some of these things start to come together, I 
will share them with the list.  Meanwhile, I have way too much to do to 
spend as much time writing to the list as I'd like to.  I struggle to 
just keep up with scanning the messages these days, but I'm grateful for 
the many knowledgeable people who continue to invest their time here.  
It's a great place for the flow of this information.



David Eisenberg
Director
Development Center for Appropriate Technology (DCAT)
PO Box 41144
Tucson, Arizona 85717
strawnet@aol.com
(520) 624-6628 (phone & fax)