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.
