16 Feet

Spring Trip

2008-05-30T13:27:00.000-07:00

Kristen and I headed to the treehouse late in April to see how it wintered.

We opened the place up, and took a look around. There wasn't any apparent water damage on the inside. It did appear that the siding on the rear of the treehouse was aging prematurely due to water running off the roof, hitting the trunk of the tree, then splashing back onto the siding. Nothing major, just some discoloration of the T-111.

The big surprise was the amount of mouse feces inside the treehouse. Being 16 feet above the ground, only attached to the tree via chains, I really didn't expect to have mouse issues. Even though there wasn't anything of interest to them in the treehouse, they appeared to have spent a lot of there spare time in there. We swept up, and unpacked our luggage.

A few small trees had fallen nearby, so we spent some time cleaning up the area. We also cut down one dead tree that looked like it could fall into the treehouse if things went badly.

One of the goals of the trip was to get a door installed. The original plan was to have it swing outwards, but without a landing near the door, it would have been difficult to hold it in place while it was being attached. Instead we installed it so swung inwards. While this was easy to do, eventually we want to flip it around. Installed the way it is now, it's difficult to reach the door handle from the ladder, and you have to keep a pretty good area clear on the inside for it to open completely.

We'd pulled all the boards off the non-windowed rough openings in preparation for installing the windows. An enterprising bird decided that the treehouse was a great place to build a nest, and snuck an amazing amount of moss, leaves, and bark in while we were off doing something else. The bird filled up one of our rain hats with the stuff, and sprinkled a fair amount around the place as well.

The remaining windows that needed to be installed did not have any casements. I'd debated hinging them some way so that they could swing inward. I couldn't figure out a good way to do it without consuming a lot of interior room, so instead I opted for a solution that would let me just remove the windows easily. The thought was that I could remove them and put screens in their place during warm weather.

To do this, we cut four trim boards sized appropriately so that they formed a lip that prevented the windows from falling outward. I temporarily used two screws to hold the top and bottom of the windows against the trip boards. I'll come up with a better long term solution down the road.

The newly installed windows looked good from the outside. I'll need to eventually paint the trim boards, they're pine, and won't last long if exposed to the elements. For that matter, the lower windows also need to be re-painted, they're in pretty bad shape.

I realized afterwards that the window solution that I chose will have issues if water runs down the window. It'll get trapped behind the trim board, and eventually leak into the interior. I might be able to solve this with an angled sill board that will cause the water to run back to the outside.

Kristen and I slept in the treehouse for 4 nights. Every night around 3 am, something would jump onto the roof, scurry around, then jump back to a tree trunk. Kristen was a little worried, especially since she was near the windowless rough openings. Luckily nothing jumped in and ate us.

We also weathered a few rainstorms and one particularly windy night. I awoke on the windy night to the treehouse swaying a lot more than I expected. It was swaying enough that the roof was colliding with one of the trunks of the tree. It wasn't anything too terrifying, but still surprising.

It was great finally getting to spend some time in the treehouse.

Strange Weather

2008-03-09T10:10:00.001-07:00

Southern Indiana has been experiencing some interesting weather lately. A month ago or so strong winds managed to knock down a good number of pine trees on various ridges around the farm.

A few weeks later, everything got coated in a layer of ice. Luckily it appears that the treehouse is still up in the tree. Our friend Tommy swung by the place and snapped these pictures.

Now it looks like Indiana and Ohio just experienced a record snowfall. If the treehouse can survive these events, I'm confident it'll stay up in the tree for at least a few years, hopefully longer.

I'm planning on heading back to the farm in April for a long weekend. It'll be fun to see how things weathered over the winter.

No Leaves!

2008-01-23T10:03:00.000-08:00

My sister and brother-in-law stopped by the treehouse site recently and snapped a picture. Things look a little different with no leaves on the tree!

Roofing & Closing up for the winter.

2007-12-04T11:16:00.001-08:00

On Friday Brent and I got up early to finish the framing, and to try to get the roof on. We'd made such good progress the previous day, we were optimistic that we could get a lot done.

Framing the last wall was rough, as access was a lot more difficult. We didn't have the loft to stand on, so there was a lot of ladder manipulation and movement. Hanging on with one arm as we tried to toe-nail studs together was tiring and time consuming.

Installing the last few pieces of siding were difficult too, since we had to nail it from the outside, and we couldn't access the side of the tree house via scaffolding. We eventually got everything finished, and started thinking about getting the OSB onto the rafters.

The roof has a 21 degree slope, which is scary enough when standing on it. OSB is surprisingly slippery, and it was a long way down to the ground. Luckily Andy and my dad showed up around this time and were willing to help out. Andy had a lot of rope, a few pulleys, and a harness. He set up a rig where he could get to each corner of the roof, and be tied in securely the whole time. I settled for a climbing harness and a fixed length of rope that would prevent me from sliding off the nearest part of the roof. Unfortunately that meant I couldn't reach the corners of the roof.

We started with the lowest sheets of OSB, and started going up from there. We left a gap in the middle of the roof so that we could get on and off easily. It was also the same slot we planned on installing a skylight into, so it worked out well.

We overhung the OSB by a foot on each side, to allow for a good eave on each end of the tree house. We also added two 18' 2" x 6" caps on the high and low side of the rafters. These helped counter lever the extra rafters that weren't resting on the frame of the tree house.

After all the OSB was up we started laying and stapling the roofing felt. This made things feel a lot safer, the felt wasn't as slippery as the OSB alone. We also starting framing in the skylight opening. The skylight would have the dual purpose of letting some light in, and giving us access to the roof down the road.

By the time we got all the felt on and framed in the rough opening for the skylight, it was time to call it a day. We didn't quite get as much done as we hoped, but had one more day of the trip to get the actual roofing material installed.

We did manage to get the roll-roofing install on Saturday. We also managed to get several of the lower level windows in, although a few ended up a bit large for the rough openings. We unfortunately didn't take many pictures, but tarring and nailing the roofing material down isn't really that exciting. Hopefully we managed to get everything watertight for the most part.

Saturday night we quit a bit early and went to a friend of the family's 50th birthday / anniversary party. It was nice to get out and be a little social after 9 very full days of work.

Sunday involved a lot of clean up and further waterproofing of the structure. I was out of time to get the door or upper level windows in, so my dad and I took some discarded T-111 and shuttered up the rough openings. Since the skylight was going to require some modification, I made a temporary cover for it out of a few 2" x 4"s, T-111, and some roofing material.

I also had to cut short 2" x 6" blocks to fill up the gap between the upper portion of the rafters where they sat on the frame. Brent had gotten the lower portion of the rafters taken care of the day before. I hammered these into place, relying on a press-fit. I suspect some will fall out during the winter as the structure shifts slightly under the various stresses.

Buttoning everything up took a lot longer than I expected. I barely had time to really look at what we accomplished before I had to jump in the car and drive back to Colorado. Dad made a comment about how he was happy to see me go, so he could actually relax a bit. I could understand where he was coming from, I was truly exhausted after the long trip.

The loft , rafters, and three out of four walls.

2007-11-01T21:21:00.000-07:00

After a full day's work, we drove into Louisville to drop Nate off at the airport. Ted and I picked up some 2" x 6" lumber for the loft and a few other supplies.

The next morning, we carried each 2" x 6" up the ladder by hand, no longer having a crane and not trusting our knot tying skills. Ted and I tore through the loft construction pretty quickly. However, we did make one mistake in not realizing that the walls had bowed out a bit toward their centers. This caused us to pull out a few nails, pull the walls together using the come-along, then re-nail the loft joists. We put a few sheets of OSB down, and had a fairly complete loft.

That evening Ted took off for Colorado, and my other buddy Brent flew into town. Even though I'd lost two good workers due to real-life constraints, I suspected that Brent had more framing experience then Ted, Nate and I combined. That wasn't hard to accomplish, since Ted, Nate and myself had zero framing experience up until now.

After a late night of story telling, Brent and I started putting the rafters and the side walls up. We notched the rafters so that they'd sit on the top sills properly. I used 2" X 6" X 12' for the rafters, which gave a decent eave on the rear of the tree house, and a pretty huge eave on the front. Having a larger eave on the south facing side would help provide shade in the summer, and keep rain and moisture off of the tallest wall. Or that's the theory, anyway.

For the rear 16' wall, Brent and I had covered the 1 foot tall wall with screen. The rear wall is well covered by the eave, and it seemed like a logical place to get some ventilation.

We used hurricane clips to help keep the rafters in place. We also toe-nailed them to the top sill using 16d nails. This seemed to secure them more than enough.

We managed to also get one of the odd shaped walls into place and sided. There was a lot more toe-nailing involved then we expected, and without the nail gun at the tree house, it was slower going then we hoped. Regardless, by the end of the day things looked like they were really coming together.

Crane!

2007-10-24T19:27:00.000-07:00

With the siding on, we estimated that the 16' walls weighed between 300 and 400 pounds. Luckily our good friend Andy had a crane that he used for his tree service. It had just enough reach for the project, and we hoped it would really simplify getting everything up onto the platform.

We got everything down to the site, and got the crane situated as best we could. We looped a few straps through the rough openings for the windows on the farthest wall. We also tied a rope to one corner, allowing us to swing the wall around as necessary as it was lifted onto the platform. Once the wall was on the platform, we braced it with two 2" X 4"s to keep it in place.

The two 8' walls went up pretty quickly. Ted and I were wearing harnesses that were tied off to the trees, so we had to do a bit of fancy foot work to keep our ropes out of the way. In the second picture, you can see the temporary stubs we screwed into the platform to prevent the bottom of the walls from slipping off while we positioned them.

The last 16' wall was a bit tricky, since we had to lift it higher than the others in order rotate it into place. Once it was rotated, it slipped into place beautifully. We nailed each wall to the platform, and also lag-bolted each wall to it's neighboring walls. Once this was done, the platform was noticeably stiffer.

My main concern up to this point had been whether or not the lag eye bolts would pull out of the trunks of the tree. So far the bolts in the tree had held, and everything felt solid. We still had a lot of weight to add to the tree house, but so far things were looking good.

We'd made such great progress that we decided to hurry back to the shop and put the siding on the 4 foot tall wall, so we could get it up in the tree while we had access to the crane. With a full five people working at once, the siding went pretty quickly.

We also decided to crane up all the OSB we were going to use for the roof. That seemed like less work than pulling each sheet up via rope. After that, we got the 4 foot tall wall up easily enough, and tacked it into place with some handy 2" x 4"s.

After all the preparation, traveling, and building, it was great to see a good portion of the structure fall into place in one day. Andy's crane certainly made our life a lot easier, and it was great having so many helping hands during the day. Thanks guys!

First few days of the trip.

2007-10-18T09:46:00.000-07:00

The marathon building trip is over. We survived with all our limbs and digits intact, and ended up with something in the tree that looks pretty cool.

Ted and I left Denver around 5 am on Friday morning. The trip went smoothly, although we had to rush to make it to the Louisville airport in time to pick up Nate. The timing worked out great, we showed up right as Nate was walking out the door of the airport. Not bad for 17 hours of driving.

On Saturday morning we headed to the local lumber yard. We'd estimated how much lumber we'd need, and picked through a lot of stock before we found everything. They didn't have enough T-111 siding, so we knew we'd have to pick that up elsewhere.

We also took a look at the platform, and discussed the trapdoor and additional attachments to the tree. We decided to scrap the trapdoor idea for various reasons, including placement issues, ladder access issues, and knowing we'd be pressed for time otherwise.

Sunday Nate and Ted started adding the additional attachment points to the platform. Dad hauled the scaffolding down to the site, and the three of them set that up. They attached a wire rope sling to each trunk, using a 3/4" stainless steel lag screw and some giant washers. The hope was that these would be backup support, in case one of the original attachments points pulled out. At the very least we hoped it'd give us some time to get out of the tree if things started to collapse.

Later in the day we headed over to Tommy's shop to grab some windows and a door. Tommy had generously offered up some spare windows he had, and one of many doors he had laying around. We also picked up 16 sheets of T-111 siding. Ouch, that stuff is expensive!

With the windows in hand, we laid out the final design, and started building the first wall. Ted and Nate were pretty antsy to actual build something, so we were up until 11 pm or so building that first wall.

Monday was a flurry of framing. As my dad and I put the siding on the first wall, Ted and Nate knocked out the remaining first level walls. After we put on the siding, we hauled them down to the site via wagon. Later, we managed to build the four foot wall that would raise the roof line on the south facing side of the building to 12 feet.

It's amazing how quickly one can frame when using a miter saw and a pneumatic nail gun. Putting the siding on took a bit of work, since we had to cut out seven rough openings. We worked until after dark trying to prepare for the next big day of getting the walls up into the tree.

After all that hard work, we had a few tape measure races. We eventually added stabilizers to the tape measures, and added jumps to the race course. Nate's tape measure was fundamentally faster than the others, although both Ted and I managed to squeak out a few wins due to clever engineering.

Two days before the trip!

2007-10-03T20:14:00.000-07:00

And my mind is turning. Here's an alternative design idea that Matt suggested:

There are several benefits to this design over the original.

Half again as much room in the loft
The roof would be simpler and safer to build
More south facing exposure

The downside is that the treehouse is starting to look top heavy. Since it's only hanging in place, how badly will it want to tip over? Unfortunately, it would seem that if you had a lot of weight to one side, that side would want to sink, which would raise the other side, thus making it want to tip more...

Preparation

2007-10-02T20:44:00.000-07:00

I leave in 3 days for the big build trip. I've been reading up on framing, trying to prepare for a full week of building. There's a lot for me to learn, and I'm pretty sure it's not all in a book. The book I have been using is titled "Graphic Guide to Frame Construction", which has been very helpful.

I've sketched out a few concepts, starting with a rough floor plan.

I decided to have a loft for sleeping and storage. The floor plan with a bed on the main level was getting too crowded. In order to have a loft be usable, I went with a high pitched roof (12 in 12, in the parlance of our times). This should allow for a bit of movement once you get into the loft, at least enough to crawl into bed.

After those decisions were made, I started with a more detailed layout of the walls, floor, and roof. I tried keeping everything as simple as possible, since I know we'll be short on time.

I don't yet know what sized windows or doors I'll be using, so most of the detailed work isn't laid out yet in the CAD. I'd like to have 4 or more windows, and a few skylights would really be nice. Our friend Tommy has kindly offered up what spare windows and doors he has in storage. Andy has also offered to help get the walls and roof up to the platform via crane.

I tried lowering the loft so that the joists would be at around the same height as the windows. I also made sure that the eaves don't hang below where I expect the windows to be.

Who knows what we'll end up with at the end of next week. It'll be interesting to compare these drawings with the final product. Here's hoping no one falls out of the tree or gets hurt!

Leveling the platform

2007-09-17T20:33:00.000-07:00

I headed back to the farm in May to check on the platform and do a little work. Since I could only get away for a long weekend, I didn't plan on making much progress. I hoped to level the platform and add a few more attachment points. Having a backup attachment point on each trunk would add some piece of mind.

I was also curious how things held up over the winter. My dad had put a tarp over the platform after I left last fall to try to keep things dry.

There wasn't much debris on top, and the tarp looked like it had held steady over the winter. There was no obvious rubbing on any of the trunks, and things generally looked great. The galvanized hardware was looking brand new.

I'd brought a bunch of wire rope slings to use as backup attachments. These were drastically cheaper than chain and were rated plenty strong for what I wanted to do.

I quickly realized that they would not fit onto the same clevis as the turnbuckles. Since I hadn't brought extra clevises, I had to give up on adding the additional attachment points this trip.

We switched our focus on leveling the platform. When I'd left it last year we couldn't quite get things level using the turnbuckles. In order give us enough play we had to cut a few more lengths of chain. You can see in the below picture that we were completely at the end of travel in one of the turnbuckles.

We also swapped out one chain/turnbuckle combination for a wire rope sling. Since one point could be a static length, we thought we'd save the turnbuckle for some other task. Also, we wanted to see what the wire slings looked like on the tree!

We managed to get everything level, and leave about half of the throw in each remaining turnbuckle. This way if things change as we build onto the platform, we'll have a bit of leeway to level things out again.

We buttoned the tarp back up, and I took off, hoping to get back in October to actually build some walls and a roof. That looks like it's going to happen, and I'll have a few more helpers this time. Hopefully the next entry will have a lot more progress!

Finishing the platform

2007-03-01T21:24:00.000-08:00

After hoisting up the cross beams we bolted them to the main beams. Luckily, hauling up the smaller cross beams was a lot easier than hauling up the main beams. It wasn't as difficult to maneuver them around the existing beams and get them into place.

After cutting the floor joists to length and hauling the joists to the site, we drilled the holes for the eyebolts into the tree trunks. We basically eyeballed their location to place them as symmetrically as we could. We had to use a pretty large lever to twist them all the way into the tree. After they were in, we determined how much chain we'd need to reach from the platform to the eyebolt, and cut the chain to length.

We next start hanging the joists. It was pretty exciting sitting 16 feet up on a 4" X 10", trying to hammer in the hangers at a weird angle. Luckily we all survived, and made pretty quick work of it. We left one joist out, knowing that we'd frame in a trap door spot later.

Since the platform was 16' X 8', we didn't have to trim any of our plywood subfloor. We quickly screwed it down, stiffening the platform significantly.

Then the moment of truth came, and we removed the temporary supports from under the main beams. I was worried that the platform would swing and rub against one of the trunks, which wouldn't have been a fun problem to solve. Luckily the platform hung centered between the trunks. We adjusted the turnbuckles to try to level the platform, but it appears we'll have to re-cut some chain in order to level it out correctly.

When up on the platform it moves and sways more than I expected. I suspect it won't sway as much once we add the walls and roof.

I ended up spending the night on the platform that evening. It was amazing to hear all the nocturnal activity around me. The tree is located near a creek and there seemed to be a small army of raccoons working the creek banks. There was a possible UFO sighting, but I'm not supposed to talk about that.

I hope to make a trip back in the spring to see how the platform weathered. Hopefully the tree is still standing, the platform hasn't warped, and it otherwise survived the winter intact.

Hoisting the Beams

2006-12-08T20:11:00.000-08:00

After eating a big breakfast, we started moving the beams down to the tree site. It took three trips with the tractor, one trip for each 16 foot beam, and one trip for the two cross beams.

In order to get the 16 foot beams up into the tree, we installed a lag bolt 3 or 4 feet above where we expected the permanent eyebolts would be screwed into the tree. We attached a pulley to each of these upper lag bolts, and then tied a rope to each end of the beam.

The plan was to pull up one end of the beam, tie it off, then pull up the other end. Luckily my brother-in-law Jason showed up, giving us a much needed extra set of hands. This was definitely a three person job, and we could have used a fourth.

One of us did most of the pulling, one guided the beam past the scaffolding and other obstacles, and the third took up the slack in the rope, wrapping it around another tree so that rope couldn't accidentally slip out.

After getting each end of a beam up to an appropriate height, Dad climbed either the scaffolding or a ladder to tie that end of the beam off. We used a lot of rope in the process, and often had two or three methods of holding each end of the beam up.

This was a lot of work, luckily our support crew showed up with some good mexican food that gave us a boost.

After getting the main beams up, we temporarily bolted some 14 foot 2" X 8"s across the trunks, so that we could rest the beams on them. We did this so we could later move the main beams around a bit to bolt the platform together. It was at this point that we realized just how much a tree moves around in the wind. I could understand how a statically bolted multi-trunk structure could tear itself apart relatively quickly.

We were running out of daylight, so we made sure we had everything roped off well, and quit for the day. We hoped that the tempoary sub-frame would survive the night. If it didn't, nothing would fall, but it might mean a lot of re-work for us in the morning.

It was another successful day, and it was starting to look like we were actually building something up in the tree.

Beam Building

2006-12-03T19:30:00.000-08:00

The next step was to start building the 16 foot beams. We ripped 4 strips of plywood to sandwhich with the 2" X 10"'s. We debated on whether the seam in the plywood should be in the center of the beam, or out toward the end. We decided it was safer in the middle, since otherwise it'd end up where the suspension points where, which already was going to be a weak point. We intentionally undersized it a bit, we didn't want it to form a ridge on the beam that would make laying the floor difficult.

We then clamped the four pieces together, and ran carriage bolts through the beam to hold it all together. Next, we used the outer plate of the suspension brackets as a template to drill holes through the beam. We wanted to get as much done on the ground, in the shop, as possible. Trying to do this kind of work up in the tree sounded nearly impossible.

It took a solid day of work to build up the two beams this way, and get the hardware mounted to them properly. We estimated that each beam was well in excess of 200 pounds, possibly as high as 300 pounds with all the hardware on them.

It took a few more hours to build the two connecting beams. We used two 2" X 10"s again, but this time without the plywood in between. In hindsight, I wish we had put the plywood in there due to the stresses on these beams caused by the suspension points.

We then bolted the whole thing together, and checked for squareness. The angle brackets appeared to keep everything square, it measured square on first try.

We labeled all the sides so that we could match everything up correctly when we were in the tree. We disassembled the platform, and tried to mentally prepare ourselves for the next big task, actually getting it up in the tree!

Final Design and Lumber Trip

2006-11-25T22:36:00.000-08:00

There were still a few things to figure out for the platform. The heart of the platform is two 16' beams. We tossed around all kinds of ideas: Rough sawn lumber, reclaimed beams from old buildings, built up beams, engineered beams, etc.

We knew the structure would sit out in the elements over the winter, so it had to fair well in wet weather, that ruled out a few options. We didn't want it to warp as the timber dried, that threw out the rough sawn beam idea.

After some advice from our friend Tommy who had a lot more experience doing this kind of thing then we did, we went with the built up beam idea. We'd use two 2" X 10" X 16', with a .75" layer of plywood sandwiched in between for each beam. We figured the plywood would add support to any weak points in the beam. Each beam would be suspended from two points, with about a 10' span between suspension points.

After changing our minds several times over a few months, we settled on a in-frame floor joist system. Originally Dad thought that the joists should sit on the frame, but he came around to hanging the joists inside the frame. It helped solve a few problems: the plywood floor on top of the joists would help keep the frame square removing the need for cross braces. It saved us from buying two more 16' pieces of lumber to use as joist caps. We also didn't have to worry about hurricane clips, or other methods of ensuring that the joists would stay on top of the beams.

With these decisions made, we updated the drawing, and calculated how much lumber we'd need. We decided to go with preassure treated lumber, since it would be exposed to the elements, at least for several months.

We rolled down to the local lumber yard, and spent a good amount of time picking out the straightest and strongest looking lumber. We went through every piece of lumber that was apporpriately sized.

I was amazed at how heavy treated lumber is. I was also surprised by how expensive it is. The lumber plus a bit of miscellaneous hardware totaled about $500. Ouch. Hopefully this painful trend won't continue.

Build Trip!

2006-11-23T19:18:00.000-08:00

In early October, I headed back to Indiana to hopefully build the platform. There were still a few design decisions to be made, but I had a pretty good idea of what the end product would be. I was hoping that the weather would cooperate and that nobody would get hurt.

My Dad and I got started setting up a base camp near the tree. Luckily it was possible to drive within 15' of the tree, which made it easy to haul supplies to the site. We cleared out some of the underbrush near the tree so that we'd have a nice clean work area.

We set up about 18' of scaffolding along one side of the tree. We roped it off to one of the trunks so that there wasn't much chance of it tipping over. At first it seemed impossibly high near the top of the scaffolding, but after a few trips up and down I started to get use to it.

All 300 pounds of hardware showed up successfully. Making sure everything was there by the time I showed up required more planning than I expected. I was really nervous that I'd show up and some critical shipment wouldn't be there, and I'd lose a few days waiting for it. I was happy to see that all the heavy packages had made it OK.

Designing the Platform

2006-11-14T11:54:00.000-08:00

Next, I needed to design a sturdy platform that would both fit in the allocated space, and be a good sturdy foundation for the rest of the treehouse.

After drawing up the layout of the tree trunks on the computer, it looked like a 8' X 16' platform would fit nicely between the trunks. I originally had thought of using all 5 trunks, and perhaps making a pentagram shaped floor, but the nice square 8' X 16' platform looked larger, and much simpler to make.

The next trick was determining how to attach it to the tree. Since we'd be building in a multi-trunk tree, I had to take into account the independent movement of each trunk. I tried coming up with all kinds of sliding brackets, similar to what other people have done. The result was a lot of complicated brackets that looked expensive to make. Plus, I wasn't really sure they'd work in all possible scenarios.

One of my friends suggested suspending the entire thing via chain. The more I thought about this, the better it sounded. It would definitely solve the trunk movement problem, and I liked the idea of a suspended platform that would perhaps have more movement than a fixed point platform.

I spent a bunch of time at Mcmaster.com reading up on hardware that looked appropriate. I eventually arrived at using a combination of eyebolts, shackles, turnbuckles, and chain. I went with the largest eyebolts I could find (1" in diameter), figuring that they were going to be the weak point of the system. The eyebolts pictured below are rated at 10,000 pounds if pulled along the line of the bolt. Since I'd be pulling on them perpendicular to the bolt, they'd support significantly less weight before failing.

I didn't want to just run the eyebolts through the frame of the treehouse. I was afraid that they'd deform the wood, with all the eventual weight that'd be resting on the frame. Instead, I drew up a bunch of various right angle brackets and plates that would help distribute the load over a larger portion of the beams. After showing the various designs to my dad and other friends, I settled on some simple 1/2" thick right angle pieces, along with some 3/16" plates.

With these decisions in place, I updated the CAD drawing, and ordered a bunch of hardware. I hoped we wouldn't change too many aspects of the design once we started building, mainly because of the investment in the hardware.

Scouting the tree

2006-10-18T19:26:00.000-07:00

Several months ago I read an interesting one page article in the back of Make Magazine about a guy who lived in a treehouse for 3 years in the 1970s. I hadn't thought about treehouses since I was a kid, but the article struck some kind of chord in me, and I started thinking about building one.

In the spring of 2006 I headed to the family farm in southern Indiana to see if I could find a suitable tree. I hiked around with my folks for a few days, and we eventually settled on a Sycamore tree that had grown out of an old stump. The tree had sprouted 5 trunks, and it looked like we could fit a good sized treehouse between them.

I wanted to put the tree up a good distance off the ground. After climbing around in trees all weekend I realized being up high in a tree was a bit more frightening than I expected. 16 feet off the ground seemed like a reasonable distance.

My dad and I measured the circumference of each trunk, and also measured the distance from each trunk to every other trunk. This allowed me to create a scale drawing of the tree at sixteen feet. I headed back to Colorado for the summer with enough information to start designing the treehouse.