Straw Bale Construction Gains Legitimacy of Codes

The distinction of being the first government body to officially adopt a straw-bale construction code goes to the Napa County (California) Board of Supervisors. The Board adopted the voluntary guidelines in California’s new law, based on Assembly Bill 1314. The guidelines still require an engineer’s stamp on all plans, however, as does every building type in California except wood-frame construction of two stories or less.

More specific and comprehensive code language has been adopted as a local amendment to the 1994 Uniform Building Code (UBC) by the City of Tucson and Pima County, New Mexico. This is a prescriptive code for both load-bearing and non-load-bearing straw-bale construction. (For more on these prescriptive standards, see

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