Engineering approval

We've had to search for a bit to find an engineer willing to deal with a project as strange and small as ours. I don't think that's so much because what we want to do is impossible, rather that engineers tend to have slightly grander visions than our humble little house will be and aren't really happy to go to so much effort for such a little house.

But, finally, we have found one. We have been very careful when choosing the professionals who will work with us to make this happen. Getting the wrong kind of engineer would be disastrous - not in terms of skill, but in terms of personality and approach. We needed someone who was game for a challenge, who was willing to deal with owner builders who aren't going to do things the way they are normally done just because we don't know what that is, who wasn't going to fight us on things that mattered to us (which are likely to be the really tough parts). So we've had quite a number of conversations now with various engineering companies in which we describe what we intend and then wait for their reaction before politely moving on to the next one. This latest guy was quietly interested during the initial conversation, but referred to our project as 'exciting' in his follow up email, and said he was game for anything that would get him out of doing yet another brick or timber frame - we figure that's a good start.

Going in to the next meeting, where we nut out the details, we had a list of things we thought would cause problems discussion:

1. Foundations - we prefer not to use concrete, and know that earthbag buildings are routinely built with gravel footings instead. We also know that the only other council approved earthbag house we are aware of in Australia was forced to use concrete foundations, so this was high on our list of concerns. Not only is concrete production a massive drain on energy resources and a massive producer of carbon dioxide, it's also expensive.
2. Bond beam - again, we know this is often required in earthbag houses, earthships, strawbale houses, etc. Anything odd it seems the powers that be believe slapping a ring of concrete around the top will somehow make it ok where it was not before. We hope to also avoid this, but are not as passionate about it as the foundation.
3. Lofts - borrowing the idea from tiny houses, we're keen to introduce two lofts in our little house, one above the living room and one above what would have been the only bedroom, which will give us much more space. This may cause issues with regulations that restrict minimum ceiling heights, problems that are avoided in tiny houses due to the whole house being classed as mobile.
4. Wind - the wind at the site is quite strong (I have high hopes down the track of introducing a wind turbine) and whilst this probably doesn't affect the walls as they're so heavy it may affect the roof.
5. Soil testing - we assumed this is necessary before any foundations can be approved, however we figure while they're testing soil for one thing they can test for others too. We also need soil testing done for our grey water system.

Turns out the foundations were easy - soil testing will confirm, and apparently we have to pick spots that have the underlying rock close to the surface (there are good spots on the site for this). The bit about the rock seems to be more to do with tying everything down so the wind doesn't blow the roof off than issues with the walls shifting over time.

The bond beam was also easy - no concrete required. Again, the issue is the roof blowing away in the wind. To find something to tie the roof to, we'll use something similar to the wooden ladder beams that are sometimes strapped to the top of straw bale walls, just to give the roof something to tie down onto. Rather than strapping the ladder beam to the foundation, though, we'll pass the ties under 5-6 courses of earthbags as they will be heavy enough to keep it secure.

It looks like the engineering approval work will cost us around $2000-3000, which is both fairly reasonable and fairly unavoidable.

Settlement on the property (when we officially take ownership and then can start doing stuff) is a little over a month away, so should be a good amount of time to get all the details for the Development Application sorted so we can put the application in right after we settle and be ready to go soon after. Waiting for council paperwork before we could exchange contracts on the property set us back a bit from where we'd planned to be, but on the flip side apparently we don't need any approval for water tanks (I've triple checked and have it in writing from the Council) so we can do that while we wait.