Page 32 - HW October 2019

frame & truss
Simpson Strong-Tie now has
CLT fasteners
NZ Country Manager, Rob Lawson, has announced that from 1 October Simpson Strong-Tie will have comprehensive new locally available range of products around CLT and engineered timber fasteners.
Rob describes the products as “screws on steroids”, and underlines that it means instead of going to a European supplier for connectors for CLT panels and big engineered timber (glulam etc) and then waiting for delivery there is a local solution now at hand, with stock on the ground.
CLT is generally employed in mid-rise residential and commercial applications and although XLAM has moved its CLT production to Melbourne, we’re hearing that Red Stag’s engineered timber project is coming along.
More on this soon.
From the new Simpson Strong-Tie CLT product range, pictured is the ABR255 Hold Down Bracket.
www.strongtie.co.nz
ability to rework a frame or truss on-site without destroying it. “We’re driving this as a better product for the customer,
not to mention from a health and safety perspective,” says
Blake Bibbie, at the same time admitting screwing frames as opposed to nailing is still “a little way off ” becoming the norm at PlaceMakers and that access to improved technology may well be the clincher for screw fastening.
Steve White at Pryda agrees that interest in screw fixing is increasing but hesitates to put a figure on how many customers have taken it up: “We’ve certainly provided the information to our customers. You know in the end it’s still their choice,” he says.
“Some people like to stick to their way or the current way and some people like to do things new. We certainly provide both options to our customers. And it’s just a bit like floor cassettes and LVL – if [our customers] see value in doing it a different way, they’ll do it.”
FRAME & TRUSS AND MULTI-UNIT
With townhouses accounting for as much as a quarter of all new homes consented in Auckland, multi-tenancy dwellings are increasingly colouring how frame & truss operates and what it produces, in particular a further increase in the still relatively green demand for floor cassettes.
Blake Bibbie says PlaceMakers has supplied “quite a few projects” with mid-floor cassettes this year and has several more underway currently for customers.
“If you can do a floor cassette this
year, what say those frame & truss plants that have that technology cannot also move into panels?”
“The objective is to speed up the build and make the build safer and that’s where it’s getting traction,” he says, adding that, although floor cassettes are not necessarily a cheaper option, they might mean two weeks’ less scaffolding for a builder which could have a positive impact on a project’s cashflow.
PlaceMakers has set up tables and jigs to make floor cassettes but, if demand continues to increase, may look at investing in dedicated machinery, says Blake Bibbie, adding that, further out, “Ultimately for us robotics comes to mind and not this week or next week or next year but it’s certainly on the horizon.”
As sort of a halfway house towards floor cassettes, in the Waikato Mike van der Hoek has been seeing demand for pre-cut mid-floors. “We’ve offered floor cassettes to people but they prefer at this stage the option of a pre-cut mid-floor, supplying all the bearers,
joists, beams pre-cut and labelled a bit like a set of frames and trusses.”
Staying with floor cassettes, Pryda’s Steve White agrees that although he’s hearing that the level of inquiry has picked up, he “wouldn’t say the level of demand has changed any great deal.
What’s in a name?
The role formerly known as “Detailer” has been changed to “Timber Structure Detailer” after much debate and a survey of FTMA members.The change is intended to more accurately reflect what the job entails and attract new entrants to the industry.
Admitting that the industry has perhaps “undervalued the worth of what a detailer does”, Mike Stanton at MiTek NZ for one admits to being “really excited” about the name change.
“Defining it as a Timber Structure Detailer lifts the profile of what that role is all about,” he says, adding:“And all of a sudden we’re attracting people who have done CAD courses!”
On top of this, following a review of frame & truss qualifications by BCITO, and a draft for the Manufacturing qualification will be ready for comment soon while the Detailing qualification will take a little longer, requiring resolution around whether it should be Level 4 or Level 5, which should attract more aspirational trainees.
www.ftma.co.nz
30 NZHJ | OCTOBER 2019
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