The NEWBeamery trusses take a departure from the solid timber frame trusses that New Energy Works has been doing for nearly 40 years. Instead, these are glulams from our friends at American Laminators that we've “built up” into 90’ trusses and pre-assembled on site.
“We have parallel cords that run the bottom, parallel cords that run the top, sandwiching what are called the web members in-between,” Oliver Ogden, New Energy Works West Coast General Manager explains.
The truss design was inspired by the wood buildings Jonathan Orpin, New Energy Works Founder & CEO and coworker Kelsey Boyer visited on a discovery trip to Europe. “When they toured many facilities in Europe rather than having big solid-member trusses of wood or steel, they had created these ‘built up trusses’ with a lot of smaller members. So on one hand these trusses have this massive presence, but they also have a lightness to them. The web members are smaller dimensionally than if we just had one gigantic triangle with a couple cross pieces.”
These glulam trusses are arguably stronger than solid wood as well. The glue-up process uses layers of kiln-dried wood with glue between. This dried material, with the glue incorporated, makes the manufactured timbers strong and stable—without twisting as you would find in a natural timber. Orientation of grain and the amount of layers in a glulam add to the strength. Glulams can be made in larger sizes than you could find in today’s timbers.
“Now we’re into the second, third, and fourth generation forests here, the size and quality of timber we’re able to get out of our forests isn’t like the old growth trees from before. Gluams give us a wood option in places where today we often use steel. Wood as an alternative to steel adds to the biophilic nature of the space and the sustainability of the material choice,” says Ogden.
Wood being a carbon sequestering material, even with the added manufacturing of glulams, is less carbon & energy intensive than making steel. Still thought & effort was put into using sustainably sourced wood material. “Where American Laminators were able, they incorporated material sourced from the Yakama tribal forestry program which is a local indigenous operated logging & forest management operation,” added Ogden.
Over the last week the team at Prime Contracting has been working with the team at New Energy Works to pre-assemble the trusses on site — prepping for the next few weeks of raising. “Prime has been such a great partner. With our current shop and raising for schedule for clients, we just couldn’t meet our own deadline. The team at Prime has come through to help us get the work done and stay closer to our schedule,” say Ogden.
As we get closer to raising day, the anticipation of the new timber frame and glulam production facility and the new CNC machine is growing. We can’t wait to be making sawdust in the space and creating more wood structures and do it more efficiently. Though right now the focus has been on creating these trusses “I think just the sheer size has been awe inspiring. Walking into the space with these 30’ tall columns in anticipation of the trusses being on them, you can tell this is going to be a pretty special place,” finished Ogden.
Our thanks to:
- American Laminators
- Prime Contracting
- Eclipse Engineering
