Attaching Vertical Louvres - advice, please.

[ToughButterCup]

Our design shows  louvres that surround the Winter Garden.

The louvres are the dark area. The nearest face has about 46 louvres (spaced 75mm apart)

 

The current design shows  that they should be attached like this ;

 

... put differently - the architect is proposing to secure an (on average) 3 meter long piece of timber top and bottom by welding a bit of angle iron ontop of (and underneath) the top and bottom beams , and then a screw (or bolt) through that to the bit of 100 by 38. (Siberian Larch - see image above)

 

Naaaah. Not good enough. Das geht nicht! It gets  windy here.

 

So, after hours of Tinternet roaming, I bumped into Australian Government advice on attaching vertical louvres.

 

Thats better methinks. Except the wood is only 38mm thick.

 

So how about fastening the wood top and bottom by inserting it in a bit of channel with an internal channel 39mm wide? (And welding that channel to the beam)

 

I will, of course, be reducing lateral movement in the verticals by attaching 2 meter lengths of 4 by 4  across the louvres - cross halving joints perhaps. I think it would be a good idea to stagger those cross members too.

 

Your thoughts would be welcome.

 

[PeterW]

I’d be using “pairs” of 50mm angle welded to the beams and then bolted to the fins. Finding a decent U Channel of the right size and then drilling it etc sounds hard work - getting 80 or so “standard” brackets made that are 250 x 50 x 50 with a 10mm hole 75mm from each end on one flange just sounds soooo much easier...!!

 

Could even get away with an angle one side and a 50x250x3mm bar/plate the other side to make a sandwich that would allow for different timber thickness / tolerance ..??

 

Edited September 3, 2019 by PeterW
Added sketch

[Ferdinand]

49 minutes ago, AnonymousBosch said:

Your thoughts would be welcome.

 

That looks like 184 fixings.

 

How do you get a middle one off afterwards for maintenance?

 

TRADA should have a decent detail for this, applicable even in huffandpuff land.

Edited September 3, 2019 by Ferdinand

[ToughButterCup]

1 hour ago, the_r_sole said:

tbf, it looks like the architect is handing the design of that over to the Engineer!

Stopping it twisting is going to be the biggest issue?

 

And shaking ( ? sorry couldn't resist it).   I agree completely.

 

Louvres aren't structural - I think that would have been the architect's  point. But we are we are. Short of trawling the Internet, looking at buildings with similar facades, and asking here, there's not much more that I can do.

 

I anticipate reducing the twisting by attaching some 4 by 4  to the back of groups of (say) 10 verticals. The attachment would be by cross halving joints.

The less Teutonic bit of me thinks that simply screwing lengths of 2 by 2 across the  backs would do. Or 3 by 2 maybe. It's what seems to happen in loads of barns round here. Hit and miss boarding has a diagonally cut bit of 4 by 4 attached to the backs of the boarding. And mostly only one, sometimes two in any  vertical 3 meter run.

[ToughButterCup]

Hmmm - that's an idea.

Faff I can do - ' long 's it's faff with a point. The last thing I want to do is be woken at 3 a.m. in a hooley to the resounding crack of louvres flying downwind - straight into our bedroom.

 

Time to get an SE's opinion methinks.

[Ferdinand]

1 hour ago, the_r_sole said:

 

It depends really how slick you want it all to look - You could put some stainless threaded bar (horizontally) through it all and use some big washers which might look a bit better? (but a lot more faff!)

 

Suspect AB may have had enough of threaded bar to last a lifetime .