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I'm hoping some experienced folks can help me with some treehouse questions. I'm trying to put a playhouse we have about 5 feet up a tree for my kids. The playhouse is about 55" x 47", so not very large. I have three decent trees in the backyard to work with. This is the plan I've got so far:   (The big brown box is the playhouse for scale.) Basically, 2 2x10x10ft. boards as beams, 2x6's as joists, and either 2x4's or 2x6's as decking material. Since I only have the three trees, I was going to use a 6x6 post to support the other corner. In looking online, it looks like I shouldn't have the joists more than 2' beyond the beam, so I think I need to shift the whole deck over about a foot since they're 2'8" or so over the one beam right now. For hardware to attach to the tree, I was going to use the 1.25" lag bolts and floating brackets from here: http://www.treehousesupplies.com/1_25_Floating_Bracket_p/br-f1.25.htm My questions: 1. Is this going to be sturdy enough? I don't want my kids falling out of a tree because my design is crap. 2. Is this overkill? It seems like a lot... more... than most of the treehouse plans I've seen. 3. Is there a way to get rid of the 6x6 support and only use the trees? The angle seemed bad for that, but I wasn't sure if anyone knew another way to support that corner. Once I get this done, I'll work on stairs, etc. Since I never had a treehouse as a kid (and always wanted one), I think this will be cool when I get it done, assuming I can get it strong enough that I'm not terrified to let the kids up there. I also have to say once you figure out how to make it work, Google Sketchup is pretty cool for a free program.
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Jul 28, 2014 01:13
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Seems good to me, those lag bolts are tested at 55000lbs, so that covers 5500lbs of actual construction. Where I got the numbers: http://stlouistreehouse.com/hardware_information If you don't want a post and plan on stairs, you could use the stairs as a support for the corner.
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Jul 28, 2014 03:28
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Here's one other thought I had: The upside is that it's simpler, has the most attachments to the biggest tree, and doesn't use the support - the downside is that on the one side, the beam hangs out for 10 feet past its supporting tree, which seems like it would act as a huge lever. To fight that, I could add a support beam diagonally out from the one tree. I thought about doing it the other way, with the farthest-away tree having both beams attached, but that tree's only about 10" in diameter, so I'm worried about putting in two giant lag bolts 180˚ apart.
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Jul 28, 2014 05:19
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You can do that as long as you put some triangle bracing to the unsupported corner. It has long slots to accommodate swaying and that could be a substitute for those brackets you are looking at. source http://loganmsmith.com/forest-tree-house/
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Jul 28, 2014 07:18
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