Building your first treehouse

A simple treehouse, 6 feet off the ground in a willow with multiple stems.

Tree houses are a fun and challenging pioneering project (if the safety rules of your Scout Association allow them) that provide a memorable adventure. But starting with a 9 metre high platform isn't easy. This post will discuss the basics of building a treehouse and how to get started.

Choosing a tree
For any tree house, and especially your first one, selecting a tree that has a few branches radiating out at the same level will make things much simpler. For a first treehouse, a tree like a willow that splits low down is ideal.

Building a treehouse
The starting point, and the part that will probably take the longest, is getting your first pulley established to raise everything else up. A heaving line, with a weighted bag, beanbag or other weight with a lightweight messenger line will help you get the first ropes up. You can then use the first rope you establish to Prussik up and place a pulley for raising items up. Everyone working at height should be using harnesses and fall protection measures.

Rigging and raising the first pole is your next task. Once it's in place, and lashed onto the tree using hessian or padding, you can raise the rest of the base poles up and set them in place.

Having established the base, the next task is to get safety railing and any roof or other superstructure up. In my experience, you can expect to spend about a third if your time getting the pulley in place, a third of the time on the first two base poles, and the final third on the rest of the structure.

Treehouse interior panorama

Here is a montage panorama covering 180 degrees of the interior of the top floor of the treehouse. You can see the following:

• the two trees (on opposite sides of the treehouse) to the left and the right
• in front of the right-hand side tree you can see the 'trapdoor' down to the lower floor

Inside the double storey treehouse

looking down the foefie slide

Today I fought my fear of heights and climbed the 6m ladder up to the double storey treehouse. The six Scouts who slept there last night said that they were comfortable and felt safe up there last night. This morning they set up an aerial runway (or as we call them in South Africa, a Foefie Slide) down from the tree, and I took a few photographs while I was up the tree.

This photograph shows how the 'cage' surrounding the treehouse works: a pair of ropes is twisted together, running from the roof to the floor of the structure. Poles are inserted into the twisted bundle (and into others along their length) at a series of heights to close the sides up. One corner was left open to allow the ladder, hoist and zipline to be accessed. All of the Scouts told me that they felt very safe sleeping up here last night, with no coverings on the sides apart from the rope and pole 'cage'.

1. Looking down the rope ladder (tied with marlinespike hitches) to the base of one of the supporting trees
2. Looking from the second floor down into the first floor.
3. The first floor 'bedroom'.
4. The second floor 'bedroom'.
5. Looking down from the top floor to the ground.

And yes, I did ride the foefie slide back down the ground, and it was great fun.

Double Storey Treehouse

The Patrol Leaders of 9th Benoni Scout Group have completed their treehouse after a week of construction at Arrowe Park. Last night and tonight they will be camping in the trees. There are two levels to the treehouse, one for the girl PLs and one for the boys. Access is via a block and tackle for the lazy, a Prussik line, or a rope ladder. Greg, one of the ATSes at 9th Benoni, is an IRATA accredited rope access specialist, and has supervised and trained the PLs in this construction. Later on today I'll be climbing the tree to conduct our 2013 planning meetings with the PLs up in the tree. I will post photographs of the interior, details and the view from the top.

Treehouse project 2012

After a break of a few years, the senior Scouts of my troop are building a treehouse in the same two trees we used all the way back in 2005. Today, they did some technical training on climbing safety, and made short-spliced loops for Prussiking. Work will continue this week, through the beginning of our summer holidays, with the Scouts camping in the treehouse next weekend. I will photograph the progress of the treehouse through the week.

Update 1: Double storey treehouse complete
Update 2: Photographs from inside the treehouse 
Update 3: Interior panorama

Treehouse, no wait... House tree?

Nevermind a treehouse, this blog has photographs of a hut made from living trees. They look like some kind of ficus to me. If you look at the detail images, you'll see how the trunks have knitted together- those columns you can see are 'woven' from stems.

Treehouse Step by Step: main page

click for larger image
These pages run through the construction of a treehouse 7m (22ft) above the ground.

Day 1: Establishing the prussicking lines
Later on day 1: Lashing first poles
Day 2: Cross poles and decking (and an emergency shelter)
Day 3: A new roof
Day 4: ..and another new roof
Day (night)5: Sleeping in the treehouse
Day 6 and 7: Cargo net platform and commando bridge
Day 8: Complete! - photographs of entire project

Treehouses on the internet

Digg this!

Treehouse Step by Step: Day 8- complete

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With the commando bridge tightened and safety rails placed in the cargo net platform, the treehouse is now complete, a big thank you to everyone who worked on this:
Greg, John, Mark, Ryan, Jacques, Luke, Hayley, Jenna, Cheralynne and Michelle. Here are some photos that show our completed treehouse:

[All of the images below are thumbnails- click on them for a much larger (300-400kb) image.]


These two images show the treehouse from the ground, on the left is the view from inside the park, the right hand side is taken from the same point as all of the daily progress shots


These 4 vertical panoramic shots show the treehouse and the platform from various positions:The first image is from below the monkey bridge, the second is from the treehouse looking towards the cargo net platform (thanks Tyrone), the third is from underneath the treehouse looking across to the platform, and the final one is taken ON the monkey bridge, looking down and up the other side to the cargo net platform (thanks to John whose foot is visible in this image)



The image on the left was taken halfway across the monkey bridge, and the one on the right was taken lying onn the cargo net platform- both by John

Treehouse step-by-step day 6 and 7

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Day 6 of the treehouse and we added the platform in the tree on the right. We decided to try prefabricating the platform on the ground and raising it up in one piece. Day 7 consisted of lashing the platform and running the commando bridge lines across.

The platform itself is a triangular frame with a cargo net stretched over it. It was to rest on the tree at 3 points, hence the triangular shape. Once we got into the tree and started raising the frame up, we realised there were a few difficulties.

1) Raising the frame. We had lines running up over the tree at 3 points, tied to the frame at the corners. One of these ran through a pulley, the other 2 were running straight over branches. The friction on these made it difficult to raise the frame up. We raised the frame by lifting each corner up about 1 metre at a time, then securing the rope and moving around to the next corner to raise it. We discovered a very useful way of working with a removable block to tighten these ropes: a pulley is attached to a prussik knot which is fastened to the line, you then use the pulley to tighten up the rope and raise that corner of the structure before taking up all of the slack in the loose end of that rope, tying it off and removing the tackle and prussik loop,which can be moved to the next tree. I will post this as a seperate item next week.

2) Securing the frame in the tree. We were limited in branches where we could place the ropes to lift the platform up, so we ended up running them over the branches where we wanted the poles to rest. This created a bir of trouble for us when we came to secure the platform, and while 2 of the poles are resting directly on forks in the tree, the third end is hanging about 30cm under the branch it was meant to rest upon. This corner is attached via a binding- a figure-8 wrapping like you can see on the camel raft.Once raised up into the tree, the frame turned out to be very difficult to manhandle from in the tree.

3) Levelling the frame. As it is installed, our platform slopes quite dramatically. Our dimensions for the frame were more or less accurate, but in the process of raising the platform up, it became wedged against the main stem and we were unable to maneouvre it free. The slope may end up working towards our advantage, though. The slope is facing towards the treehouse and a sloping cargo net makes a rather comfortable hammock.    

The bottom line is that prefabrication might have saved us a bit of time, but gave us a few headaches too. The nature of this sort of pioneering is that you are working things out for the first time as you go along. Sometimes the solutions are easy or obvious, sometimes less so. In other cases eg. camp gadgets and rafts, prefabrication is an obviously good thing. For treehouses, it is difficult to say,but I suspect that with this particular platform, prefabrication was slightly easier than building it in the tree, particularly when it comes to tightening the cargo net.

After the platform was secure (thanks to Jacques for spending hours in the tree working on that) we started running the lines across for the commando bridge. These are attached at one end with a round turn and 2 half hitches, then tightened using our main block and tackle (that we use to raise people and equipment into the treehouse) and the prussik trick described above. then tied to the tree at the treehouse end using a round turn and 2 half hitches as well.

The commando bridge will be completed on Monday, when I will post the final sequential photo of the treehouse and also do a 'tour' showing all the features of the treehouse.

Treehouse Step by Step: day (actually night) 5

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Last night 6 people slept in the treehouse, and were all safe and rested this morning. To make it safe to sleep in, rope barriers were woven all around the platform and walls from an army tent were used to close it in. Despite some wind and light rain, I am assured that the treehouse was comfortable and warm. The new roof design worked very well. Once in the tree (and I finally went up onto the platform today) the whole structure is secure, and other than an alarming tendency to move when the wind blows the trees, is not much different from being on the ground.

The next step from here will be to concentrate on the cargo net platform in the tree to the right and build the commando bridge. Hopefully we will be able to do that this week.

Two panoramic photos from the treehouse: The first is a 360 degree horizontal panorama (click on the thumbnail to view it full size- it might take a while to load) You can see the walls, the woven barriers and get an idea of the height. The next one is a vertical panorama, starting looking horizontally then up over my head and round behind me (the topmost part of the image is upside-down).

Treehouse Step by Step: Day 4

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Day 4 of the treehouse project and we spent the day working on the roof (again). There had been heavy winds over the weekend that damaged the roof,so we spent a few hours trying to repair it before deciding to start over again with a new design. John came up with the idea of building a framework for the roof, with 2 trusses and purlins joining the two trusses, and a tarp layed over the top. The whole roof structure is braced and then suspended from the tree by the ridge and the four corners tied down onto the deck. Raising the roof up was quite a job, and we actually had to brace the roof mainly to stop it being damaged while we pulled it up to the treehouse.

It might seem like we are going backwards at times, but this roof design is mch better than the one were using before, for a few reasons. Firstly: it works better- I am confident that this will keep the rain off and be more secure. Secondly: the scouts designed it themselves. The previous roof was an idea I had that didn't really work that well, but the scouts themselves came up with this one and worked through how they would go about building it. This photo shows the roof as we built it and also shows the diagonal bracing under the tarp-this is important because it prevents the roof from falling over sideways.

When time allows, it's good to build some experimental structures like this- starting off without knowing all of the solutions to problems and dealing with them as they come up. It doesn't always mean that you will finish on schedule, but you will learn a lot.

Treehouse links

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While we are waiting to carry on construction, here are some links to treehouses in the Internet:
The Treehouse Guide - Photos of tree houses from around the world, construction tips and links
Corbin's Tree house - Step by step photos of a permanent treehouse construction
Tree house links - Corbin's links for tree houses
Tree house workshop - a firm that designs and build serious tree houses
Treehouses.org - US charity that buils wheelchair accessible treehouses
Treehouse construction guide - General construction information for treehouses

Tree house Step by Step: day 3

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I'm blogging the progress of a treehouse my troop is building, and today is the third day we are working on it. Today turned out a little slower than I hoped- quite a few people were busy with other things today so couldn't make it, and the placing of the cargo net in the tree on the right has taken longer than I thought.

As you can see, the 2 trees on the left that our platform is in are pretty simple trees: straight up, we have attached ourselves to the lowest branches (7.05m off the ground according to my tape measure). I thought the tree on the right would be simpler because it has lower branches. It turns out that they are just an obstruction to raising and lowering poles into this tree.

To focus on the positive: we have raised the roof for the platform much higher, you can stand underneath it easily over the whole deck area. We have also attached a pulley for the cargo net tree, so we are ready to hoist poles into it.

This weekend one of my scouts is doing his Springbok expedition and most of the scouts who have been helping me are going. So I will not blog on the progress tomorrow, as there won't be any :). Hopefully on Monday we can carry on and with some luck finish, so that Tuseday and Wednesday the scouts can sleep in the tree house (we have done it before, with no casualties unless you count a cell phone). The thumbnail on the left links to a 360 degree panorama from the platform- thanks to Hayleigh Chamberlain for climbing up and taking this.

Treehouse Step by step: Day 2

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Lots of progress made today- 6 of us down working on the tree house (although 2 of us don't climb trees so I suppose it's more like 4).

The 2 remaining 4m poles were lashed to the base today and then a block and tackle attached to replace the single block we were using. Decking boards (marine ply boards) were then raised up and tied down to the base. Our decking boards have 15mm holes drilled along all four edges- very handy for attaching them to structures like this.


Later on, it started raining so the next step was to build a temporary roof to protect the decking and keep the treehouse dry. This was done using a large tarpaulin.

Most of the heavy work has been done. Tomorrow we will work on the roof (we want to raise it higher and I'd like to make something a little interesting) and the monkey bridge/commando bridge to the other tree.

Treehouse Step by step: Day 1 Afternoon

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Once a pulley is in place, poles can be hoisted up. This treehouse springs from two trees that are about 4m apart. two 6m poles on opposite sides of the tree span between the two stems (you can see them already attached in the above photo). The first pole is the most difficult to hoist and secure: 3 people are needed: 1 to tie the pole and hoist it from the ground, and one person on a harness in each tree, with ropes and frapping mallet ready to secure the pole. The best option is to hoist the pole up horizontally if space allows, and then to tie the supporting rope off when the pole is at about the right height. The scouts in the trees then proceed to attach a further support to each end of the the pole, directly supporting it using branches above it. You can them fine-tune the level of the pole before beginning the square lashings.

Remember that one of the poles in the square lashing (the tree trunk) is very thick and you may end up using 3 or 4 normal length lashing ropes. It is best to start with one rope and attach more as needed using sheetbends- trying to tie a lashing with a very long rope is rather inconvenient. Having lashed the first spanning pole on, the second can be placed in position and levelled with respect to the first. Once this pole is lashed, the other poles that will support the platform can be added. At this point I had to go home but one of my Assistant Scouters stayed on to continue, and 2 4m poles were added.

The tree to the right of the image will be the site of a hammock using a cargo net, and a monkey bridge will link the platform to the hammock. Speaking of monkey bridges, this is the coolest one I have ever seen: used by the Orang utans at the National Zoo in Washington,D.C

If you have any design suggestions, e-mail me and we might try them out

Treehouse step by step: Day 1 morning

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My troop is busy building a treehouse: I will track the progress over the next few days on the blog.

The first task on day 1, having chosen the trees, is to get up into them. The trees we have chosen are trees we have used before- the lowest branches will anchor our platform and are some 7m (22ft) off the ground. To get up there, you need to throw a messenger line weighted with a monkey's fist or mallet (or half brick) over the branch, then use the messenger to pull a heavier line over. lower the heavy line to the ground and tie a bowline in one end. Then feed the other end through and pull it up,fastening it to the tree. The photo above shows the situation after the ropes have been attached to 3 trees that we will use for the treehouse. To climb the rope, use Prussiks. The Prussik is a very useful knot if you have not come across it before. Having climbed up, the next step is place a pulley so that the poels can be raised up into the trees to start the first lashings...

Tree houses

Treehouse construction and tips

 

Step-By-Step treehouse : day by day log of a 7m (21ft) high treehouse.