Glulam supply

[saveasteading]

Any suggestions for economic supplier or glulam near Inverness please?

 

Pasquill at the airport are being responsive and helpful,  but someone on here suggested they may be expensive. No quote yet.

The only other direct manufacturers are quoting £2,800 cost, but the same again for delivery....ie a whole artic for 2 days. (42m of beam).

Other localish suppliers appear to be intermediaries and don't manufacture.

It is all over budget already as we were wrongly advised that ridge beams were cheaper than using tied a frames, but building is starting and the programme is tight.

 

Q2.

Do we really need glulams for hips and valleys? The remaining old building works fine with ridge boards.

[nod]

We used Pasquil last time 

This time they are 30% more expensive than everyone else 

Glue lams are near double the price of a ridge timber 

and no You can use GL or a ridge beam 

[SimonD]

43 minutes ago, saveasteading said:

Any suggestions for economic supplier or glulam near Inverness please?

 

Pasquill at the airport are being responsive and helpful,  but someone on here suggested they may be expensive. No quote yet.

The only other direct manufacturers are quoting £2,800 cost, but the same again for delivery....ie a whole artic for 2 days. (42m of beam).

Other localish suppliers appear to be intermediaries and don't manufacture.

It is all over budget already as we were wrongly advised that ridge beams were cheaper than using tied a frames, but building is starting and the programme is tight.

 

Q2.

Do we really need glulams for hips and valleys? The remaining old building works fine with ridge boards.

 

Not at all local to you but I can recommend Buckland Timber but fear delivery costs. Recent updates I've received from them indicate they're having to offer alternative timbers in their glulams, such as Douglas Fir etc. due to supply chain issues and costs.

[saveasteading]

I will report back on costs when we get the quotes back.

I have gone to Pasquill  and Buckland today.

earlier to Glenalmond/Intelligent Solutions and to Glulam Solutions. They are agents but will get whole loads and we could collect.

also to AJ Laminated Beams (the artic).

 

FYI Pasquill gave me a stocklist and said they hate anything off this list, but Architects and Engineers like to design specials.

Our Engineer specified beams that are not on this list.

 

My hunch is that specifying glulam for the hips and rafters is convenient / habit / prettier whereas a big timber would be much cheaper and easier to cut and to fix to. I don't fancy cutting that angle on a £400 piece of glulam on 4 weeks delivery.

Fancy hangers are shown for rafter to beam connections, but silent when the awkward cuts apply. I am guessing we use screws, but daren't ask the Engineer or they will all be special fabrications, as are the glulam to glulam junctions.

[jamieled]

I had costs from pasquill and glulam solutions for our ridge beam. In the end I used Pasquill, partly as we were buying a load of JJI's from them as well so it made sense with delivery costs.

[MG-Wales]

On 05/05/2022 at 14:35, saveasteading said:

I will report back on costs when we get the quotes back.

I have gone to Pasquill  and Buckland today.

earlier to Glenalmond/Intelligent Solutions and to Glulam Solutions. They are agents but will get whole loads and we could collect.

also to AJ Laminated Beams (the artic).

 

FYI Pasquill gave me a stocklist and said they hate anything off this list, but Architects and Engineers like to design specials.

Our Engineer specified beams that are not on this list.

 

My hunch is that specifying glulam for the hips and rafters is convenient / habit / prettier whereas a big timber would be much cheaper and easier to cut and to fix to. I don't fancy cutting that angle on a £400 piece of glulam on 4 weeks delivery.

Fancy hangers are shown for rafter to beam connections, but silent when the awkward cuts apply. I am guessing we use screws, but daren't ask the Engineer or they will all be special fabrications, as are the glulam to glulam junctions.

Engineer here.

As a minimum, I would ask the engineer to review the glulam sizes (and grades if needed) to match the stock list from your supplier and avoid having special sizes on order. For example, 2 ply 45x253 (floor glulam size) could be used instead of 90x270, or 2 ply 45x300 in place of 90x315.

I am not familiar with your roof, but of you have many different lengths of hips and valleys chances are that the engineer's design has been based on the worst case and then the specification extended to shorter beams. In this case it may be possible that the shortest beams can be multiple softwood sections fixed together instead of glulams.

If you can get hold of 45x240 C24 or 47x222 TR26 let your engineer know, as sometimes us engineers specify softwood only up to 45x220 C24 (more common) before going for glulam.

Regarding the valleys to ridge connections, I suggest to have a look at a catalogue from Simpson Strong Tie and to ask the engineer to specify hangers from there based on their structural capacity. There are flitch hangers (need to be ordered specifying the angle as they are made to order) that will work at funny angles and take quite a lot of load. Otherwise a few long bolts across the beams will usually do the job structurally, or you can even look into large diameter Rothoblaas screws, they can be specified quite easily with the static properties stated on their catalogues and their sales people are quite helpful on the technical side.

Hope it helps!

[DragsterDriver]

I had 12m glulam ridges via RML ltd. Very big, very heavy.

[saveasteading]

One supplier is favourite. News once completed.

 

We called the engineer to report that they were specifying special sections, and they reduced the size,  saving us some cost of course. Which they shoud have done at design.

The longest beam is having to by replaced by 2 beams side by side.  More cost.

What with the glulams and multiple hangers this will cost many £k more than the A framed option we asked for.

 

The simpson hangers are listed at £22 each. Any suggestions fof z supplier at nearer £10, as there are 70 of them?

 

Re the very awkward connections of valleys. I know we can't premake them accurately. Plan is to fix them temporarily, then make ply or tin plate templates for local manufacture.

 

I note that the scarfe joints are rather simple, which will at least save a lot of joint overlap timber.

Joiner favours full 12m lengths to allow measure/cut on site. Good thinking...i don't fancy cutting errors on this stuff. If only we could get an artic down thd track.