Building a Treehouse: Part 1
Topic: Kids' Stuff
Posted: Sat, Apr 29, 2006 
I am in the process of planning and building a treehouse. For inspiration, I checked out a few books from the library (ISBN's: 0789304112, 0810949520, and 1890132853). I am going to build our treehouse in a single tree, so I poured over the single-tree designs. Each of the single tree designs featured in these books were supported by numerous 45 degree angle braces placed under the main platform to hold the weight of the treehouse. This is certainly functional, but I want something a bit more pleasing to the eye, plus I don't want to duck each time I walk under the treehouse while mowing. My idea is to suspend the treehouse from the tree without the aid of supports under the main platform.
Here are the details:
Tree: Oak tree, 76 in circumference at base
Treehouse size: 10 x 10 with 7ft walls plus a roof
Treehouse height: base starts at 7ft off the ground
The tree will go right through the center of the treehouse.
Now, for the tricky part; attaching the treehouse to the tree. My plan is to anchor the treehouse to the main shaft of the tree using two 3/4in bars of all-thread that completely penetrate the tree. I will use the exposed ends of the bars as anchor points and use chain to attach the two main support beams that will hold up the treehouse.
The attached diagrams will help add context to this description.
Here is the plan for the floor:
Here is a diagram for how it will come together:
(Read Part 2 of the story.)
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Comments
1. May 1, 06 11:28 AM | Chris Borland said:
here is a link to a book I found useful. you can also consider using the method of getting up into the tree house as additional support for the platform.
2. May 1, 06 11:42 AM | Steph Mineart said:
I've seen more complete versions of the plans, and this is pretty rockin' for a kids tree house. Brent's come up with some neat engineering tricks.
3. May 2, 06 10:00 PM | Norm said:
I built quite a few tree houses in my younger (pre-GTO) years ... this one seems to have plenty of engineering in it. Typically, we would lag bolt some 2X6s to the tree trunk and build the floor platform on top of the 2x6s. The roof rafters were then attached to the tree trunk too and provided the lateral stability for the floor platform once the sidewalls were attached. We were always more concerned about keeping other kids out of the treehouse and the route to get in was usually only for the truly fearless. :-)
4. May 4, 06 10:39 AM | bmundy said:
The inspiration for this design is a treehouse that Pete Nelson from Treehouse Workshop (http://www.treehouseworkshop.com/) built for a Buddhist camp in Japan. The Buddhist camp's requirement was that the bark of none of the trees used to support the treehouse could be penetrated by support anchors. Working under this constraint, Nelson developed sandwich-clamps that wrapped around the tree and provided anchor supports for the base of the treehouse. In hind-sight, Nelson does not recommend this method as it was not nearly as strong as conventional bolt-in anchors.
Following the spirit of this constraint, I asked myself how FEW points could I use and still build a treehouse. 4 was the number I came to. Either use 4 bolts or two bars that go all the way through the tree. In both cases, I would drill through the bark in only 4 spots. This seemed reasonable in terms of safety and strength for the treehouse and health of the tree.