[joeblowofidaho]

One of my customers has a cedar glulam in their house with quite a check in it. I was thinking about repairing it with an epoxy. Does this sound reasonable or is there a better way?

 

[TazinCR]

What kind of load is on it and can you post pictures?

 

[Termite]

Cedar glulams sure aren't common, and it wouldn't have been all that wise to use one in an application that involves much load. Southern pine and fir are the industry norms in the glulam business (fir is the norm in your neck of the woods, and southern pine is the norm in the eastern half of the USA).

I can't imagine that the checking would be in more than one of the laminations unless this thing was home-made by someone that didn't use dried lumber. Can you provide a pic?

If the glulam is structurally compromised by the checking I don't think that epoxy is going to help much, at least in the lower 1/2 of the beam (the tensile portion).

 

[Ron6519]

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[Ron6519]

A cedar glulam sounds like a structural oxymoron. Sort of like a balsa wood glulam.
Ron

 

[joeblowofidaho]

Here are pics of the glulam.
The check does not go all the way through, it's just on the side showing and is about 10' long, maybe 3/4" wide.

The roof is rated for 150#/sf snow load, so it probably is Doug Fir. The thought was to fill it with resin and brace it up while it cures. Would lag screws to pull it up to the resin help?

 

[Gary in WA]

I'd replace that. The bottom couple inches is under tension, and who knows how deep or what that separation did to the structural load rating. It's called de-laminating, not checking. Be safe, G

 

[Termite]

Yup, you appear to have a pretty serious failure there. No, epoxy and bolts won't restore enough of the strength to the tensile part of that beam. Time to look into replacement, or involving a structural engineer at the least.

 

[Ron6519]

Aren't these supposed to be installed in the interior of a structure?
Ron