landyacht said..here in kalgoorlie,they were one of the first to allow straw bale in town, but if you were to send in an application now you would spend alot of money and time banging your head against the wall. they hate any kind of recycled materials in buildings, so forget your recycled posts and beams.
Ive got a huge stack of 8x10 karri going to waste cos they just put too many conditions on any kind of alternative build.
I reckon straw bale would be awesome. just being able to carve all the shelves and niches straight into the wall would be a dream
Good advice, and the building industry regs are the same here in Vic. Basically with about 92-95% of all homes being 'project' (cookie-cutter) homes - instead of the home needing to comply with the building industry regulations, the regs have been designed & favoured toward the most common denominator, therefore the way has been paved for your mass production residential home companies, and any form of 'alternative' construction is getting more difficult each year as the standards seem to be slowly removing all references to alternative building and focussing on 'energy-efficiency' of brick veneer urban homes. Anything out of the ordinary is simply not (directly) referenced in building standards, code or regs.
I recently had to turn-away an owner-builder that wanted me to help him through the design & construction process of his own home from timber sourced on his property and using 'alternative construction' methods (including bracing, load-bearing windows, earth retaining above ground-floor without using membranes etc.) . Whilst I would have loved to be involved, the time that I would have had to commit to that project would mean that he would have had to basically 'employ' me for months. He couldn't understand why and was trying to do it on a shoestring budget & just get my advice when he wanted it - so I had to decline. So many meetings would be needed to get it through, including the planning process, getting engineering principles to work & convincing the building surveyor that they will work as a 'deemed to satisfy' alternative, assessing the energy efficiency of an alternative structure with passive heating/cooling, coupling, thermal mass etc.
Straw-bale shouldn't be as difficult as the structure is very straight-forward & the bale insulation properties can be calculated quite easily, but you need to find a building surveyor that is passionate about, or at least has an interest in alternative construction methods & not just interested in making sure it complies with relevant building regs. Good luck with it!
