What is glued beam - features of this building material
The endless debate about what it is better to build a country house from will continue all the time and each material will have enough supporters, and they, in turn, will always have arguments in favor of their choice. If you take the dry statistics, it turns out that there are an order of magnitude more private wooden houses in Russia than all the rest combined. Wood is our national building material!
And which house to build from a tree? Of course, the strongest and most beautiful. Thank God, now material is widely available that combines several useful properties of wood glued beams. It is durable, beautiful, little susceptible to deformation and goes well with various finishing materials. Houses made of glued beams look elegant and majestic. In a word, living in such a house is a real pleasure. Why is this building material so attractive? Let us consider in more detail its features.
Content
- What is glued beam and how is it made video
- Types of glued beams
- The use of glued beams in suburban housing construction video
- Finnish glued beam houses
- Glue for glued beam
- Glued beam trim
What is glued beam and how is it made
Glued beam is a wooden massif made of ideally even boards (lamellas) interconnected with special glue, previously dried to a moisture content of 10-12% and with dead knots removed, wormholes and cracks.
Thermal grooves are cut out on the finished product, which upon subsequent connection provide protection against freezing. Tests have shown that the temperature difference outside and inside the house, built of glued beams, reaches more than 50 degrees. These impressive results allow you to achieve a high level of heat saving.
Due to the fact that the production process of this material requires expensive equipment and is technologically very complicated, the cost of glued beams is quite high. However, there are significant aesthetic and technological advantages that make it possible to distinguish glued timber as a material for construction that is very popular and in demand on our market.
Types of glued beams
Produce various types of glued beams:
- incredibly strong bent array for arched floors,
- timber from plywood glued for layers for finishing and construction work,
- lamella beam for building houses.
The price of glued timber depends on the material for production and the type of wood, the most common is glued timber from northern conifers (pine, spruce and larch), and the most expensive is a cane of Canadian cedar.
The use of glued beams in suburban housing construction
Since all excess moisture is removed during the production of glued beams, subsequent deformation of the material is minimal, this is a big plus when building houses, because you don’t have to wait a year or two for the structure to sit down. Installation of the structure is simplified due to the fact that the beam is completely ready for installation, it only needs to be sawn into size. The house is going as a constructor.
It only takes three to four weeks to install the walls, and a completely turnkey house from glued beams can be built in no more than three months.
Timing is also an additional advantage, as it affects the total cost of the building. The economic factor affects the choice of this material also because during the construction of brick or foam concrete, the interior walls of the house cost about 4-5 thousand rubles per square meter, and the external 2-3 thousand. Having built a house from glued beams, it is not difficult to calculate how much money saved on finishing can be spent on other works.
Finnish glued beam houses
Our Scandinavian neighbors have achieved great success in the technology of building glued-beam houses. Well-known prefabricated house manufacturers such as HONKA and Lameco are well known.
Also, in large quantities, an arbitrary Finnish profiled glued beam is delivered to the Russian market, which has proven itself in terms of quality and price characteristics. Recently, Finnish manufacturers have been actively building joint ventures in Russia, which, due to cost reduction, also has a beneficial effect on price.
Glue for glued beam
In the production of glued beams, special gluing machines are used, which allow laying a thin layer of glue (not more than 1% of the thickness of the glued surfaces) on the lamellas.
Depending on the operating conditions of the finished products, various types of adhesives are used. The most famous manufacturers of adhesives are the world famous companies Akzo Nobel, BASF and Dynea, producing a wide range of products for the production of almost all types of glued beams. It should be noted that modern glue for glued beams is environmentally friendly and its manufacture is tightly controlled.
Glued beam trim
An important advantage of glued beams is the minimum cost of finishing work, as the appearance of the material itself is even and noble. In addition, as mentioned above, glued beams undergo primary processing during production. It is only necessary to cover it with a chemical protective composition with an antiseptic against mold and paint it with varnish or paint.
Particular attention is paid to the ends of the wall elements most susceptible to cracking. They are treated with special impregnation for the ends, forming a protective film and at the same time pulling together existing microcracks.
