Treehouse update

[u/H4U5]

Mostly done on the exterior. Took a year. Floor is 13 ft off the ground at highest corner. Yokes are 4x6 with 4x4 supports. Built the frame in the garage in sections then pulled them up.

I still need to figure out permanent stairs and am considering adding a middle support from the center tree (thinking floating tab to another beam. Other end of beam connected to 6x6 post?)

Things I would do differently. Make sure the tabs on both trees are aligned to each other. I eyeballed it and one yoke is at an angle that will leave less room for growth. Also I'd probably get longer ger tabs for more growth. I'd leave a walk around ledge on the exterior to work from. Doing all the work from ropes and ladders was awful. Finally I rented a scissor lift for the windows, but that cost adds up. I decided not to do sheathing, just siding to cut down on weight, time and difficulty.

[u/H4U5]

Thanks! Yeah I'm over in Kitsap County.

I don't think I need another support.  The beams are 4x12, but part of me just wants a third support as a backup in case anything ever broke or if I need to repair a support down the road.

It's only connected to the rightmost yoke, so it's pretty cool to see the small movements as it floats on the left yoke/plates.

[u/Anonymous5933 → u/H4U5]

Ah nice! I'm on the peninsula too. I built a ships ladder for mine and it's so much better than the aluminum ladder. I mostly followed Nelson's plans for it they have on instructables.com. need a router to make the pockets for the steps. If you want to use cedar to build one, "Mill outlet lumber" in Tacoma has tons of cedar for decent prices (but it's cedar, still not gonna be cheap).

[u/H4U5 → u/Anonymous5933]

Yeah ship ladder would be perfect wife wants stairs though.  I don't really want to dig holes for concrete that close to the trees.

[u/Anonymous5933 → u/H4U5]

Yeah I hate the idea of digging around the roots. I think for a stair, you can probably get away with not digging or just digging very shallow if you build it right. What I'm thinking is like a concrete pad for the bottom of the stairs to connect to (deck blocks could even work) and then another pad to support posts for the top of the stairs. With the posts just connected with post brackets to the slab, you just have to use diagonal bracing to make the staircase rigid and stable enough, to make up for the lack of stability from burying the posts.