The Bhutanese Leading the way.
The acute shortage of timber in the country has been around for a long time. But the the timber shortage at least to some extent may be relieved. This is because the Forest Resource Management Division (FRMD) of the Department of Forests and Park Services (DoFPS), in collaboration with Häring corporation ltd. of Switzerland is trying to bring in Glulam in the Country, .
This is because the technology behind Glulam makes better use of what conventionally is considered rejected and unusable. With such technology the timbers usually wasted and unused are glued together to make better timber which would probably last a 100 years.
Glulam is glued-laminated timber in which beams of laminated wooden boards are engineered to homogenise the particular deficiencies like knots or cracks of natural wood. During the demonstration the experts in the Glulam made a giant timber from the small pieces glued firmly together measuring as big as 50 meters.
The President of Board Haring Corp Ltd Switzerland, Chris Haring said products of such technique comes with lots of advantages as compared to the conventional products in terms of fire and earthquake resistance. The biggest advantage he said is that the pieces can be glued to form timber of desired dimensions.
The officials present at the demonstration acknowledged that such a technology can be useful not only in conventional constructions but especially for the dzongs. They said that for the giant pillars in dzongs, it is difficult to get the desired tree of such a dimension in a natural form. “With the technology, we can easily make pillars of any size with small peices of woods, “ said a forestry official.
Chris Haring, said Bhutan has enormous volume of forest resources. However, he said, the fir and Spruce trees which usually comes hollow in the core can be made more useful with the technology. “The technology is simple,” said Chris Haring. According to him, the timbers produced from such a technology can last more than 100 years.
He also added that given the initiation from the government and the interest from the entrepreneurs, he will be more than willing to provide all technical supports in adopting the technology in the country.
In the press release issued by the president, he said, “wood is amazing and there is no other construction material in the world that is of greater benefit to mankind.”
Some of the advantages of Glulam are that it is competitive with steel, it has equivalent weight and strength ratio to steel. The product is also non- corrosive in a chemical environment and has excellent elastic behavior in earthquake zones
