Cob RE: cob codes

[M J Epko]

	Another post by David Eisenberg; this one illustrates the kind of results
his work is having:

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Thought this little tidbit might be of interest...

Last Thursday I received a phone call with tremendous potential
significance.  The call was from Roy Fewell, who works at ICBO
(International Conference of Building Officials - the Uniform Building Code
folks) headquarters in Whittier, California.  Mr. Fewell asked me if I
could provide him with copies of all the straw bale codes that had been
developed to date.  He said he had the California code but needed copies of
the Tucson/Pima County, Arizona code, the New Mexico code and any others
that I knew about.  I told him about the Austin, Texas code as well, which
should have been adopted by now (do you know anything about the status of
this Bill Christensen?  Perhaps you could give Ben Obregon a call and give
us a status report).  I said I could provide him those documents and asked
what he planned to do with them.  He said he had been speaking with a
mutual friend, Bob Fowler (Pasadena, California Building Official and
former Chairman of the Board of the ICBO).  He said they planned to
assemble this information to submit a proposal to the appropriate committee
working on the new IBC (International Building Code), for the creation of a
new chapter for straw bale construction.  This code is being developed by
the International Code Council (ICC, an organization made up
representatives of the major code organizations which was co-founded by Bob
Fowler) to develop a national performance, rather than prescriptive,
building code.  A long and encouraging conversation ensued.  It was quite
informative and enjoyable.  

We, of course, assembled the materials and sent them on to him.  Okay, I
hear you say, what exactly does that mean?  My best guess is this: that the
committee, when they get this material to review and go through it, will
reject the initial request and describe a list of test and research
results, upon which to judge the proposed code.  This is both bad and good.
 Bad because it will take quantities of money and time to accomplish this
body of work, which is what we've been trying to accomplish for some time.
Good because we will have, for the first time, THEIR real research list,
not ours, to use as the basis for seeking financial and technical support.
The significance of the list and their initiation of the submittal for a
new chapter is large, IMHO.  Of course, who knows, perhaps they'll be
convinced by the mesmerizing power of our work (and hopefully we'll be
represented in person at the committee meeting) and they'll just let us
through the gate :->.  Much more likely is a years-long process to develop
this information to their satisfaction, but this is a slightly different
ball game, and we'll just have to wait and watch.  It will be very
interesting to watch this one unfold.  

Meantime, I just keep thinking ... They called us!  

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

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   Freewheeling autonomous speculation - Think!
      Personality #7 represents only itself.
    M J Epko - duckchow at mail2.greenbuilder.com
               Kingston, New Mexico
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             Clean air smells funny.