Archive for the 'Treehouses' Category

Corbin and Louise’s Wedding

Corbin zip lines into the treehouse. Louise walks up the stairs. We kiss and are married!

H.264 / AAC encoded, 13.7 MB, 1:11 duration.

YouTube version, which isn’t as good of quality.

PS: Big thanks to Mark for doing the ceremony!

Ah, some pictures and details I meant to post ages ago.

Building stairs for the treehouse:

Accessories for the zip line:

And me installing it:

Louise and I are married! Here’s a few pictures from one of our guests, Mindy:

Corbin zip lining in:

Louise walking up with Rev. Mark on the treehouse platform:

Us together:

Louise zipping in the dress:

Overall, the wedding was a ton of fun. The band was great (thanks Nate, Jon and Pecos!), the food was great, and the guests were great.

More pictures later as we get them in…

I’m still working on it, but here’s a short video of some of it.

Well! Today I finished the base platform. This is all I’m planning on doing for the wedding. Well, this and adding stairs. Sometime after honeymoon I will turn it into a real treehouse with walls and a roof. It turned out pretty neat, but a little shaky in the horizontal plane. I had let the brackets cool by themselves and didn’t harden them by quenching in water (or oil); I think this made them stay slightly flexible, which I thought would be a good thing. In addition, the half-circle design isn’t as strong as a complete circle which would prevent most lateral movement in the horizontal plane.

Here’s a sneak peek of the finished platform. I’ll hopefully write a blog entry on the making of it, and include some of the framing details.

The first step was to install the top brackets. Well, first had to get the proper bolts. I wanted to use 3/4″ thick (radius) by 8″ long lag bolts — galvanized to support the weather. When I built my first treehouse, I just bought them from OSH or San Lorenzo Lumber. Now a days, we have Home Depot, and still OSH. Home depot doesn’t really carry large lag bolts, and OSH has a wider selection, but no 3/4″ lag bolts. Both places have coarse thread 3/4″ ungalvanized bolts, and that was my only real option. I could order something from the internet…but I wasn’t that patient. I did some test holes in a sample tree and discovered that the coarse thread 3/4″ bolts thread quite nicely into a 5/8″ pilot hole. The only problem is that they will eventually rust, since they aren’t galvanized. I figure it will be an experiment to see how long before they rust and cause the treehouse to fall down. I think it will last at least 10 years, probably 20 and maybe 30. The bolts will be “somewhat” protected from the elements, so they shouldn’t rust all that fast. I realize I’m making a mistake by not using the proper hardware, but that’s okay by me.

So, I sunk the first bracket into the tree; all was fine. I drilled the hole for the second and realized that an 8″ lag bolt is too big for a tree that has a radius slightly less than 8″ (oh, duh!). I really need to have used a larger tree, but this is the one I wanted it in. So, I traded in my 8″ bolts for 5″ bolts. They seem to get as much holding power as the longer ones, and I think 8″ is overkill.

Rock climbers use much smaller bolts — but then again, those bolts are drilled into solid granite. So, a second experiment is to see how well these shorter ones work. Before I got the shorter ones, I used a few of the 8″ ones but made a 1″ space out off 3/4 inner diameter by 1″ outer diameter steel pipe I had from moving my mill.

Here’s some more iPhone pictures:

Each beam was carefully leveled with the previous beam and then leveled radially. Unfortunately…I now realize that didn’t work so well, as some of the old beams are slightly warped. I should have ripped (or jointed) a side perfectly flat before using them…but then again…”oh well”..

More soon…

I bought some 4” wide by 1/4” thick steel from SIMS metal in San Jose with the intent on using it to make brackets. Now, 4” would be perfect if I used 4×4s for the knee braces, which I would ideally want to use. However, I have 2×8s for free, so I’m going to use those. To create a bracket that holds them, I need 2” wide pieces of steel. At first, I figured I’d just cut the 4” pieces down to size, but I quickly discovered how hard that was to do with a sawzall or jigsaw (with metal cutting blades, of course).

So, I went back to SIMs and bought some 2” wide 1/4” stock mild steel — this is perfect for the 1.5” wide “2×8s”, since the two 1/4” sides takes up the extra 1/2”.

I took some pictures with my good camera and the iPhone. I’ll use the latter since I have them handy on my computer already. I used the mill to create 1.5” spaces out of some square tubing I had; I used them to ensure the spacing was correct when I welded the brackets together. I drilled the holes *after* welding, which was a mistake, since the top was really chattery when I drilled it. I drilled it after to ensure the holes lined up, which seemed like a good idea at the time. Instead of doing that, I now realize I could have just drilled the two sides together at the same time *before* I welded them. Oh well!

It is really tricky welding 1/4” steel with an oxy-acetylene torch. I used my dad’s old #2 or #3 tip and old torch, which leaked slightly at first and caught on fire near the handle. A quick tightening with the wrench prevented subsequent fires, and I used gloves from then on since it was super-hot welding with lots of heat in order to melt the thick steel. I got some good welds on the outside, but the inside welds are ugly and hard to hit. It makes me wish I had a wire feed MIG welder for quick and dirty stuff like this. I vastly underestimated the time it would take to weld the brackets ,and it took me several evenings of work, and almost an entire Saturday to finish most of them.

Here’s a shot of the lower knee braces. I intended to have the hole for the 3/4” bolt to be at the bottom of the brace (more on that later). You can also see the small 1.5” square tubing spacer that I used when welding and drilling:

For fun, I used the mill to square off the 45 degree angles. It would have been faster to just do it with a file, but the mill makes cleaner and more precise cuts.

For drilling, I used my drill press and a bunch of the T2 tapered drill bits I got with my lathe:

I really need to learn how to sharpen drill bits. I tend to just destroy the tips. I did use cutting fluid while drilling, and drilled out the sizes a few times when working up to 3/4” inches. The brackets will hang off the tree with a single 3/4” lag bolt (more details on that later — I had trouble finding the right ones). The wooden 2×8 knee brace will attach to the bracket with two 5/8” bolts. It’ll be solid (or, so I hope).

I decided to redo my wedding treehouse concept. I wanted something far enough out in front of the trees to suffice as a proper area to stand for the ceremony, and the typical umbrella treehouse design seemed like a good idea, so I went with it. This design can be seen in some old treehouse books, such as Nelson’s “Home Tree Home” (the basic treehouse building bible — I used it when I built my last big treehouse about 10 years ago).

I’m opting for a half-round treehouse for several reasons:

1. Cost/wood — a lot of the wood I’m using is reclaimed from when my deck was built (they are 2×8’s used to form the cement retaining wall)

2. Time. I want to get it done sooner than later.

3. I don’t want to kill the tree. The diameter isn’t that large, and I’m afraid that sticking a ton of lag bolts into the tree will kill it if I go entirely around the tree. Even with lag bolts half way around the tree could potentially get damaged, but, I don’t think anything will happen since redwoods are *very* resilient. These redwoods have survived a fire that happened a long time ago (at least over 35 years ago, since the main house has been there that long. )

I’m a little late at writing my blog entry..since I’ve already got a start on the treehouse, but the next steps were to fabricate the treehouse brackets. That’ll be the next entry..

I would like to give a big thanks to Dan Wright, from Tree Top Builders out in PA. Dan has been building some amazing treehouses for quite some time and is well experienced in the art of treehouse building. He offered to talk to me a bit about my new “wedding treehouse” design and gave me some great feedback for how I could improve it. He quickly pointed out how my lower-horizontal brace would easily be over-stressed by the knee braces, and it would need to be really beefy wood (or made of steel) in order to withstand the forces exerted on it. I had not thought of this and he had a great point! I’m definitely more of a a software engineer than an architect, and I wish I had more formal training in architecture and engineering. Dan suggested using several knee braces coming out from the tree, and some other things that got me re-thinking about my design. In the end, I decided to scratch my two-tree approach, and design a single-tree knee brace version using custom brackets. The more I thought about the two-tree approach, the more I realized it would simply pull apart like my old treehouse eventually did. I didn’t want to make the same mistakes (instead, I want to make new ones).

When I built my first few treehouses, I didn’t have the option of using steel brackets attached to the tree. The cost (and hassle) of getting them made wasn’t worth it. Plus, I really enjoy doing stuff myself. Learning how to weld has opened up a lot of new ideas and possibilities for me, and I figured some treehouse brackets would be something within my skill set. I’ll post more details later as my new treehouse progresses.

It is quite cool that people can make a living out of building treehouses, and in many way I envy Dan for building treehouses all day long. But, don’t get me wrong; I really love my job at Apple and working on Cocoa is highly rewarding. Dan has a ton of treehouse experience, and I highly recommend anyone who is serious about building a real treehouse to call him (or some other treehouse company) and get them to properly design your treehouse, or even build it for you. They will build it to last!

Here are a few great pictures from Dan that I’d like to share with anyone who happens to read my blog. It is quite interesting how people are now using steel brackets into pipe to hold the lower knee braces; it gives some space to the tree to allow for growth.

Well, a few weeks ago it finally happened. My treehouse fell down! Well, not entirely; about 3/4 of the floor fell out.

I took a few pictures with my iPhone; I’ll probably be going back in a week or so to do more cleanup and scavenging.

Here’s a view from the ground, looking up at the treehouse. The sink is literally hanging by a thread (the pipes!):

A view from inside the treehouse:

Another view from underneath:

The floor fell down and rotated on top of the things in the treehouse:

So, what happened?

Well, a few weeks ago we got a lot of rain and wind; that was probably the pushing factor that made it fall out. But, the main reason it failed is due to a bad design. I knew the treehouse wouldn’t last forever, and I knew that I did some things wrong when I built it. In the end, it lasted for 9-10 years; I started building it when I was 20, and moved in when I was 21. In a few short months (April 13th) I’ll be 31. The design was flawed in several ways:

1. HUGE 24′ spans with doubled up 2×6’s (not quite as strong as a 4″x6″), with ZERO 45 degree supports underneath the house. I initially had put a few 45 degree supports, but my lackluster attachment made them not do much, and they eventually just fell down. Now, douglas fir isn’t made to span that huge of a distance, and was prone to have a huge amount of support weight on the edges.

2. Non-floating foundation. Ideally, I should have made metal brackets that would allow one end of the attachment to the tree to “float”. Since I didn’t do that, the movement of the trees was slowly pulling the house apart. It was particularly worse when it was really windy out, and it made the whole house creak really bad. NOTE to self now that I can weld: make brackets!

3. Built-in foundation. Instead of having some joists that the real floor would be built upon, I just built it directly into the joists. That works for smaller houses, but for larger treehouses it wasn’t a good idea. The floor acted like a torsion box, and probably flexed the worse at the ends.

4. Related to #2 — “tree on wood contact”. The edges of the 2×6s had two 6-8″ lag bolts bolted into the tree. The wood-on-bark contact never would really dry out, allowing it to rot slightly.

In addition to all those problems, the other kicker was that we recently stored a bunch of stuff in the treehouse, since we rent out the “big house” on the property and needed a place to store things. Unfortunately, most of that stuff got damaged when it took a 40′ fall and had the floor fall on top of the stuff to boot.

Oh well…lessons learned!