Warehouse Thommen Furler, Rüti bei Büren

The project
Thommen Furler AG is a specialized company for chemicals, lubricants and disposal/recycling of industrial and hazardous waste. Due to an increase in the volume of acids and alkalis to be stored, a new storage hall was designed to meet the high demands of aggressive chemicals. Compared to steel, wood has a high resistance or insensitivity to aggressive media. Due to the relatively short life cycle of the storage tanks, it must be ensured that defective tanks with diameters of 4 - 5 m can be replaced without any problems. These usage-related properties required an element design of the roof, which can be disassembled in the assembled state with a mobile crane and loosening of some fasteners, thus ensuring replacement.

The construction method
The warehouse, 61 m x 16 m footprint and 9.5 m height, required a division of the hall length into three sections. The supporting structure of the outer walls is built in a post-and-beam construction with an influence width of the columns of 4.5 m. The columns of the outer walls are made of wood. The roof shells (consisting of 2 pieces of glulam) trusses and roof elements prefabricated in the factory of Holzbau Moosmann AG are fixed to the columns of the outer walls. The glulam trusses were manufactured by the company Stuber AG in the form of an arch truss. The elementization of the roof shells ensured a fast construction progress during the erection and prevented possible damages of the prefabricated equipment due to weather conditions.