Back to the main structure, the front façade features two main finishes. On the left hand side we have an Equitone finish, a pre-finished rain screen panel, which has been installed on the Nvelope system. Under this façade, you can see the system identified in stations 2 and 4 comprising a vapour permeable membrane, fire and water rated plasterboard, bracing as required, and finally the main structural element. Here, this loadbearing structure consist triple studs of LVL, with groups spaced at 450mm centres. With LVL studs typically achieving a compressive strength of between 47 and 51 MPa, it is clear that once they are nail laminated together in threes, each group becomes a mini-column. Keep in mind that this wall panel has been designed for the loads of a seven-storey structure, and as such this high loadbearing capability is necessary.

Indeed, these high loads are the reason why the wall’s top and bottom plates are a different colour to the studs. While rough sawn timber exhibits impressive structural capacity when loaded parallel to its length, when loaded in the tangential direction (as occurs with a top or bottom plate) lower strength graded timber is susceptible to crushing when heavily loaded. While this results in very little movement on a floor by floor basis, when occurring over several floors it can add up to shortening that must be considered during design. For this reason, we recommend the specification of higher strength timber in the top and bottom plates used in high load areas – something that can be seen here with the use of an F17 hardwood. The use of this higher strength material effectively mitigates the crushing, making for a straight forward design and construction process.

Note that F17 LVL (as per the studs) would also perform this function adequately, however generic machine graded pine products would not be suitable for highly loaded areas.