[Cob] non-building code areas

[phil]

Our building coalition invited a building inspector to our last meeting. He knew nothing of natural building methods, had heard of strawbale but had never inspected one and was open to listening.

I didn't tell anyone who he was until the meeting had gotten to the discussion stage and then he just started interjecting information.

Before the meeting I had a long conversation with him concerning cob and a little about strawbale (the subject of that meeting) so when we got down to questions he had a little bit of knowledge with which to work.

Most serious questions about buildings and permits came down to getting an engineer's stamp on the plans. With that, you can build anything.

One of the main focuses of the coalition is to change NC building code to include natural methods. He said that it could take ten years or so but once it was proscribed in code that anyone would be able to build (with in those proscriptions) an earthen home without an engineer.

There are permited strawbale homes here as well as earthships and cordwood. The only cob home I know of that was permited was built as a workshop, but then the owner moved in and his neighbor turned him in. It is now empty.

We encourage all of our members to work with code officials, to help educate them and the public and to make naturally built homes  a more easily attainable goal. 

Phil Hawn
President
The North Carolina Natural Building Coalition
naturalbuilder.org


 --- On Thu 10/30, Jilly < JILLPRUETT at peoplepc.com > wrote:
From: Jilly [mailto: JILLPRUETT at peoplepc.com]
To: coblist at deatech.com
Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 19:22:15 -0800
Subject: [Cob] non-building code areas

Getting no where positive with the officials for the area I wanted to build. (I did call in questions, in a hypothetical scenario). Even with the minimum square footage option. <br>Unfortunately, it doesn't sound positive and is turning my head toward different areas altogether, as it is more important for me to live in this uplifting sculptural house than to live in or around Port Orchard. That being said...<br><br>How can I find out what areas do not have building codes, so I can weigh my options? <br>I hear from this list that this is true in (parts of) Missouri, Tennessee and W Virginia.  <br><br>jilly<br>p.s. Thank you all for the support / emails I received off-list. :)<br>_______________________________________________<br>Coblist mailing list<br>Coblist at deatech.com<br>http://www.deatech.com/mailman/listinfo/coblist<br>

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