An engineering wood product, an I-Joist is an update over the old wooden joist which was not very effective. It has an awesome strength when compared to its size and weight. There is a considerable difference between I-Joist and dimensional timber and the biggest difference is that the I-joist can carry heavy loads with considerably less timber than a typical dimensional solid wood joist. That’s why I-Joist helped remove many commonly occurring problems of using solid timber as joists. A dimensional piece of timber is prone to crowning, twisting, splitting, cupping, something that I-Joists are very effective against.
TECBEAM® ‘I’ Beam/Joist is a unique, patent protected, innovative light weight steel and timber composite structural beam produced by Tecbeam Australia which is a big name in Australian building products innovation, licensing and manufacturing.
The composite TECBEAM® ‘I’ Beam/Joist is made of a continuous light gauge galvanized steel web, with press formed stiffening ribs, uniformly spaced service holes, and structural timber and fixed by spikes to each side of the continuous steel web. TECBEAM® joists are superior and stronger than commonly used joists owing to their manufacturing procedure. Due to their strength, they can be used in all types of floor and roof construction and they suit all kinds of architecture including Victorian and modern.
A TECBEAM® designed floor can easily replace conventional structural steel beams and hence help in reducing the time and cost involved. Ceiling plaster board and flooring materials can also be fixed directly to the joist, and many services can be easily installed through the web holes, including air conditioning ducts, large waste pipes and more helping in avoiding the tedious process of cutting holes in the beam web whilst installing.
TecBeam and TecSlab Flyer [2]
TecBeam 2013 Design Guide [3]
TecBeam_Installation Guide [4]