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Hardwood Glulam spans further

October 14th, 2015

Did you know that you can already use locally made, quality hardwood Glulam beams for large buildings and residential projects?

There is so much talk about timber being the answer to our growing market in multi-residential buildings. It makes sense after all – timber solves cost restraints, weight issues, time, safety, ease of construction, it is great to look at, sustainable and carbon sequestering (to name a few). So why aren’t all architects and designers using timber as the building blocks for our increasing demand in large buildings?

Wood stores carbon:

For those of you living under a rock, buildings made from timber look and feel great. Do yourself a favour and walk through Docklands library in Melbourne, it is an absolute delight! The buildings constructed from mass timber not only use less carbon in the process of creation, they also store carbon for the life of the building – a vast improvement on traditional methods using concrete and steel and this could well be one of our greater answers to fighting climate change (refer to Michael Greens Ted talk for more). Some of the recent examples of timber construction include Lend Lease’s ‘Forte’ (previously the tallest timber building in the word), Melbourne’s Docklands Library as well as Treet building in Norway -the new tallest timber building in the world and hopefully, this timber research program by SOM for a 42 storey timber building will also eventuate one day.

CLT or Glulam?

Could the reasons we haven’t jumped head first into mass timber construction be that there is no CLT manufacturer set up locally to provide a realistic service and custom manufacturing? Maybe you can answer that better than us here at ASH. What we do know is that CLT is not the only answer. Treet building in Norway will be built with some 550 m3 of Glulam and only 380 m3 of CLT – making Glulam the major component. Australand’s ‘Green apartments’ were built using timber stick framing and timber flooring cassettes with regularly trained carpenters.

Our locally grown hardwood is environmentally certified and will span further than pine or softwoods (the timber used in CLT) which means greater strengths can be achieved through smaller dimensions. While our own laminating capability is limited to 7200mm long (more about that further down), there are a number of manufacturers across Australia and New Zealand who have the capability to partner up with ASH and laminate larger (1000mm) and longer (18000mm) section beams for your project. Not only will they be stronger but Victorian Ash also comes without knots and it is easily stained – making it suitable for visual applications if applicable.

MASSLAM

Our current range in Glulam will be promoted under the MASSLAM range and includes columns and beams up to 12m long. These members can be used inside and out with the use of highly innovative, invisible, water-based H3 treatment technology. Make contact with an ASH rep if you would like to know more.

If you, an engineer, designer or architect you know is looking for large section hardwood Glulam solutions over and above the sizes mentioned above, please contact us at sales@ash.com.au. or visit this webpage.

Lets put our heads together and create a local solution to an international desire.

Looking for glulam span tables?

Do not fear, for F17 span tables click here OR to get the MASSLAM span tables – contact us today.