“It ain’t rocket science.”

In the early days, that was the unofficial motto of the California Straw Building Association (CASBA). It was meant to communicate that straw bale building was accessible to all. Their mission, however, took on a more serious tone and laid the groundwork for what would quickly evolve into much more than a supportive and tight-knit community––it would become a straw think tank of sorts.

That mission, along with some other details of CASBA’s structure, were defined at their second meeting, held just four months after that auspicious weekend out on the Carrizo Plain.
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At that point, Ann Edminster, an architect and green building consultant, and Bruce King, a structural engineer, both from the Bay Area, stepped in as co-directors. They gave CASBA the structure it needed to turn into a full-fledged association––one that was serious about socializing straw bale construction (and having fun while doing it).
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“I think loosely, the idea was, this is a really exciting and cool building technique and it has wonderful properties in terms of ecological performance and community building and how do we socialize it more broadly,” Ann said.

They formed committees, identified some paths to obtaining nonprofit status, and set a formal meeting cadence and membership fee structure. But even with co-directors and a structure in place, CASBA was to remain open source and open to all, not just practicing professionals. And that set the stage for attracting a membership base of passionate “doers”.
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Raising bale

As the CASBA community continued to grow, members stepped up in various ways to help carry the mission forward and to progress the use of straw as a viable building material. In 1999, Ann and Bruce organized the first International Straw Building Conference held in San Francisco. That same year, Pamela Wadsworth-Goode and Kelly Lerner, who had assumed the co-director position, published the “Building Officials’ Guide to Straw Bale Construction”. Without strong guidelines in place, building officials didn’t quite know how to handle straw bale construction just yet.
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This was largely because California had simply adopted some template codes from Pima County, Arizona, which was the first in the nation to allow load-bearing straw bale construction. But architects and builders in California who were actively designing and building with straw quickly realized the guidelines borrowed from Arizona had their shortcomings.
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So, in September 2001, architect and CASBA member Martin Hammer, along with Bruce King and architect Dan Smith, met with state agency representatives to change the two primary deficiencies in the guidelines: the water-resistive barrier and internal pinning requirements.

So, Martin got to work.

“I continued to work through the state process, developing a state straw bale building code, but I could see it was indefinitely postponed,” Martin said.
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Because California had yet to adopt the I-Codes that the International Code Council released in 2000, getting any kind of amendments to the code seemed futile. At that point, Martin directed his efforts to the national I-Codes. Around that same time, Bruce led CASBA in a massive effort to conduct straw bale seismic and moisture testing initiated with a California Deptartment of Food & Agriculture grant and other CASBA funding. This provided additional ammo to the building code work.
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Fast forward to 2013, more than a decade after starting this journey, and Martin, along with Mark Aschheim, Laura Bartels and David Eisenberg finally succeeded. Appendix S for Straw Bale Construction and Appendix R for Light Straw-Clay Construction were approved for inclusion in the 2015 International Residential Code.
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“All of the code work that’s been done, the structural testing that was done, and the fire rating testing––all of that together––hasn’t just helped the straw industry, it’s helped other alternative building methods as well,” said Pamela Wadsworth-Goode.
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And in 2019, CASBA members, led by contractor Jim Reiland, published the “Straw Bale Construction Sourcebook: An Illustrated Guide for Design and Construction”.

Passing on the think tank

CASBA members have continued their building code work, helping to amend or add the cob/monolithic adobe, hemp-lime (hempcrete), tiny home, and other appendices in the IRC. And while much of this work involved many of the founding members, over the years, “next-generation” CASBA members have also stepped to the plate to carry on this effort.

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Now, under the leadership of Massey Burke, the association is stepping even further into the “straw think tank” role.
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“There’s endless amounts of research that needs to happen,” she said. “I’m working on a bio-regional handbook with the State of California, helping to think about regional materials, and supply chains and scaling––all of the elements that would come together to make an industry.”
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As a group, they’re also working on developing ways to help incubate small- and medium-sized businesses focused on bio-based building.
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With all of these efforts, it appears the founding generation has full faith in the “next-generation” members to uphold the mission and the values set all those years ago. In fact, at CASBA’s West Coast Natural Building Conference and 30th anniversary this past April, the founding members ceremoniously passed a giant straw-filled baton to the next generation. The gesture was symbolic of CASBA’s open-source nature.
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“There was something happening last night that reminded me of the magic that happened on the Carrizo,” said CASBA co-founder Turko Semmes. “There was an energy and a community that was sharing and forming. It was exciting. And it reminded me of these 20, 30, 40-somethings who gathered on the Carrizo Plain 30 years ago, and I was just over the top with joy.”

Interesting bits...

• For every milestone CASBA anniversary, they meet back where it all started––that abandoned motel out on the Carrizo Plain, and this year was no exception. And though it has a bit of a Bates Motel vibe, you can feel the specialness of the place. As they shared a champagne toast, they reminisced about that first meeting 30 years ago and the memories they’ve collected along the way.

New Episode 🎙️

Raising Bale: Building a Straw Think Tank

Raising bale: Building a str... Jul 17 · piper: decoding healthy... 31:14   ​

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