NEED HELP with building inspector in Georgia

Hello Permies. I am reaching out the the Permies community in hopes of finding assistance in dealing with a building inspector. Just recently I had my final inspection on a straw bale house with  a cob floor and the inspector dropped a bomb shell on me requiring a structural engineer to sign off on the foundation/ slab and insulation of my house. Everything else has passed. I have been working on this owner/ builder home for 5 years (part time) and am almost ready to move in. It has a cob floor and rubble trench foundation and the only structural engineer that would return my contacts says there are some concerns, but will not come out and look at it.
If anyone knows an architect or structural engineer that is friendly to natural building, I would be very appreciative. Please contact me here on Permies. With warm regards.

you might contact engineering dept at University of Georgia and ask for help and possibly suggest using your structure for a student project and have them test structural integrity.
maybe do some research into the professors there and see if any of them might be more open to alternative building designs.
if you can get the state university on board its most likely that a local building inspector would not question their expertise

Wait, they waited until final inspection to drop a "foundation integrity" bomb on you? I'm assuming your construction is not clandestine, you've submitted plans and taken out permits. If they had concerns, they should have insisted on the engineer's stamp right from day one. What the heck were they doing until now? Seems like someone dropped the ball and they are in full CYA mode.

/rant off

Edit: This post was not as nice or helpful as it might have been. The error is mine. My apologies to our fine moderators.

Take it to the council meeting and ask about why this was not there during construction, that's why they have more than one inspection.

I don't know what it's like where you live, but here building inspectors are gods. They can make any stupid decision as long as it's remotely backed up by code. My husband's a structural engineer and deals with this stuff all the time. Not long ago, he was dealing with a situation where the building inspector had misinterpreted some code and given my husband's client nonsensical stipulations. The easiest thing to do was just go with it.

I suspect you'll have a really hard time getting an engineer on this. My husband's office is one of the few in the area that does small residential stuff like you're doing. They basically do it as a public service because it's time consuming (especially alternative stuff where the code isn't written for it) and they don't make any money on it.

I'm guessing that now that you're at the final sign off, someone at the office is looking at your build as a whole, rather than each individual stage, and thinking, "Hang on. This is a little out there. Are we sure we want to be liable for this?"

I think Bruce's idea is good. Also, they might just want a professional on record (someone, anyone!) that they can shift liability to, so you might be able to get creative with the type of professional and use someone unconventional.

My husband suggests forging something 🤣 If they just want to check a box on a form, they'll never look up Enemabag Jones's credentials. He also suggests just moving in and seeing what happens. They won't issue an occupancy permit, but maybe they'll never enforce anything. If anything happens, they just want to be able to say, "Well you don't even have an occupancy permit, so it's not our problem."

Keep in mind my husband and I both come from families with traditions of thumbing their noses at building inspectors, and we've carried on the tradition by not getting anything on our property permitted. We may give seriously bad advice 😁

I have like Jan, bootlegged many things. I never got a permit or a single inspection on my house. It took them about four or five years to notice I had built one!

But as a Carpenter myself I and several other builders in my area have noticed incredibly inconsistent inspectors, like others mentioned; they can pretty much make it up as they go. We had one inspector that would not okay a rough sawn beam  because it did not have a dry stamp (it wasn't kiln dried). The owner of the house had cut and milled the timber himself as a feature in the home.

When the problem inspector went on vacation, a different inspector from the same office came out and okayed the job!

The only reason they are asking for an engineer to sign off on the job is so they have no liability in the event of a collapse or something. Ask if you can sign a waiver, I bet there is a provision for building your own home with backwoods material.


EDIT:  I found this while looking it up..  https://seaog.org/Find_an_Engineer