Battle of the beams

Yesterday our friend Richard came over from Devon to help Mark and Lew get the glulam and I-beams into place. The boys put in a long shift (10 hours) trimming each beam to size and shape before maneuvering it into place between the rib beams.

Positioning the beams was made tricky by the shape and spacing of the rib beams. Mark had run a purlin down one side of the house and the beams were rested on that and propped up on bales or hung from bale retainers on the other side. Once all the beams were in a second purlin was put up underneath them on the other side. The beams will rest on the purlin and either be bolted to the flange of a rib beam or kept in place by timber blocking.

As more and more beams went in there was less and less room for maneuver. The last glulam beam to go in was the most awkward to get in place and, typically since the guys were getting very tired by this time, was also the heaviest.

Once we had glulam and i-beams adjacent to each other we noticed a difference in height between them. The glulam beams were the wrong size. They were 255mm rather than 240mm. With hindsight we should have measured them before we unloaded them. Our bad. We have two options. Either rest the base of all the beams on the purlin and pad the top of the i-beams before putting the floor over them, or pad the bottom of the i-beams so that the tops of all the beams are level and leave the bottom of the glulam beams exposed as a feature in the ceiling below. At the moment our preference is for the latter.

#strawbalehouse #strawbalewoodlands #Ibeams #glulambeam #purlin