"Engineered timber is now well established in the housing sector, featuring in 75-80% of new homes’ floor systems and in an increasing number of roof systems," said Simon Jones, business development director for the UK and Europe.
Perhaps ironically, he continued, the future may lie in "taking some of the product away".
"We think the future is in holes – for mechanical heating and ventilation services, for example. The ability of I-joists to accommodate holes is very useful and Boise is able to be very flexible in the positioning of the holes. They can get close to bearings and be quite large – up to 150mm is possible in a standard 241mm-deep BCI joist – making them suitable for the placing of soil pipes.
"Due to the high grade OSB we use -where the face grain runs vertically – we are also able to cut square or rectangular holes in the I-joist web," he said. "So as builders move more towards air handling systems, we can accommodate them."
On the subject of systems, several builders are working with Boise in a trial of the HI-PIRform roof panel system which was launched last year. Each roof panel comprises rigid PIR foam insulation bonded between the webs of parallel BCI joists to create a continuous slab. U-values as low as 0.1W/m2K are achievable using 320mm-deep BCI joists and 220mm-thick PIR foam.
"We wanted to develop a roof system that didn’t put too much load on the walls so we came up with the VERSA-RIDGE support system which supports the roof panels at their apex. It includes our VERSA-LAM LVL – which in terms of stiffness and bending is the strongest engineered timber available in the UK today," said Mr Jones.
