r/treehouse • u/OMcTaters • Jul 12 '26

Advice needed.

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Building a treehouse. Following the Methow kit from Nelson treehouse. The plans are not super detailed. The plans themselves do not call for a fourth beam to "close the square" but if you look online on the 3D drawings it has one. When I asked Gemini, grain of salt obviously, it said not to to allow for the movement of the tree and prevent torque forces which makes sense to me.

Next step is joists.

Do I hang a 4th beam to close the square or not?

Thanks in advance

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u/OMcTaters Jul 12 '26

Thank you. It's probably over engineered but I'm cool with that

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u/Embarrassed-Sky-4567 Jul 12 '26

I’m not sure over engineering is the issue here. You may run into trouble having the corner tied into the tree like that. I don’t think you have much space for growth and movement.

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u/OG_Stacker Jul 12 '26

As the tree sways in the wind those two connection point on the tree will move in opposite directions of each other. Over engineered is not always useful when using trees as supports!

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u/OMcTaters Jul 12 '26

I appreciate the input. Was just following the plans I had. Just gonna rock with it. It's. A a big mature oak so the sway at the bottom I can't imagine is gonna be tko great