Product category:
Building Energy Efficiency and Sustainability
News Release from: amazonails | Subject: European standards for sustainable building
Edited by the Buildingtalk Editorial
Team on 28 April 2008
European standards for sustainable
building
UK's leading organisation in strawbale building, amazonails, host meetings of representatives from Europe to work towards standards and courses for sustainable building across Europe.
The meetings took place during the week ending 19th April in the historic weaving village of Heptonstall in the Calder Valley, close to amazonails' headquarters in Todmorden, West Yorkshire ConstructionSkills, the building and construction Sector Skills Council which accredits 85% of courses in the UK, is working with amazonails and its partners across Europe - including Germany, France and Bulgaria - to finalise the curricula and course content over the next 18 months - based on courses which have been developed and are currently being taught by amazonails
This article was originally published on Buildingtalk on 30 Jan 2008 at 8.00am (UK)
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Barbara Jones, director of amazonails, led one series of meetings to start the development of common courses, including clay and lime plastering and building with other natural materials, which will lead to NVQs and City and Guilds qualifications in the UK and equivalent qualifications in other European countries.
The second series of meetings, led by Jakub Wihan of amazonails, was working to take the first steps to gain European Technical Approval for strawbales as a construction material, to develop a European code for loadbearing strawbale structures, and the aim is to launch a European Strawbale Building Association in 2009.
National strawbale building associations and constructors from Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Slovakia and Spain were represented.
Barbara Jones said: "These are exciting and significant developments for the future of sustainable building".
"At present the UK is the least restrictive European country in allowing strawbale construction and the involvement of ConstructionSkills in development of sustainable building courses gives a tremendous boost to strawbale building being accepted as a mainstream building technique not only in the UK but throughout Europe".
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