Tree House Number 2: The Walls Go Up

December 25, 2015 by easternhighlander

The foundations are in place, the floor is down so next the walls go up…

The floor to ceiling windows were made as units of four in the workshop then held in place until the walls are built to support them.

Tree house walls start to go up

Didymus practicing building by interlocking planks at the corners (just in case we need to know this technique in the future …. stay tuned wood lovers…).

Interlocking planks at the corners

We layered shinda (string) in-between the planks to provide a first form of gap closing / draft proofing for where planks were not perfectly machined.

Placing string between each plank

Front door frame with lintel

Delight and Edmore wall building

You get the idea now!

Tree house north wall at sunset

Tree house back door frame facing west

Looking out of the window in Nyanga direction (west)

Tree House Number 2: The Floor Goes On

December 24, 2015 by easternhighlander

Now we switch to dried, planed pine as the flooring starts…

Didymus starts the flooring

Tendai flooring

He’s good!

Flooring the tree house

Delight cutting the flooring to length

Flooring round a tree trunk? – Of course!

Its been floored

Tools of the trade

Tree House Number 2: Floor Joists

December 24, 2015 by easternhighlander

Next the seligna floor joists are added. All the treehouse foundations are in seligna rather than pine.

Didymus and Tendai start the job

The first 2 floor joists

Working on square corners

Vampire bat

OK – its a dog!

Aloe and white frog

Delight and Tendai

Edmore with PPE

The new Troutbeck School book holder-opener

It’s hard stuff this seligna

Edmore

Delight

Nice doggie pic

Tree House Number 2: installing long supporters

November 1, 2015 by easternhighlander

After the short supporters were positioned operations moved round to the 2.5m side of the treehouse requiring ‘long supporters’

Tendai carving out holes for the long supporter beams

First the bases were carved out as before. So far this has remained a ‘tree house’ i.e. we have no support from the ground. We are trying to stay ‘pure’ and not touch the ground – lets see what happens over the course of the build!

Delight chiseling

Now for the ‘technical’ bit. We jack up each cross beam to a) make sure they are all on the same level, and b) counteract the ultimate load they will bear from the weight of the walls, roof, contents and occupants. You should see the pages of calculations I had to do before we knew how far the raise the ends of each cantilevered cross beam prior to the supporters being positioned underneath….!

Hi-lift jack in position

We used an essential piece of kit – the Hi Lift Jack – shown above and below. It’s really for helping 4WD vehicles get out of sticky situations but we have found another use: jacking up our tree house foundations!

Didymus checking that this is indeed a good idea!

and happier back on dry land

Edmore – roofer turned tree house builder

It’s a precision job of course

“Jack it up a bit more”

We set the ends in position first then worked on the intermediate sections.

Aligned end to end first

‘Hi-lift-ing’ each beam in turn

A happy sight for any tree house builder

Delight concentrating

Tree house foundation beams by Hi-Lift Jack

Looking good so far – and we haven’t touched the ground yet!

(Sorry, missing a doggie pic so far)

The Tunguska event of 2015 – OK, more tree clearing by the ZESA lines

October 14, 2015 by easternhighlander

So someone had the idea to run the electricity lines up the bottom of a small inclined valley. Then various trees grew along the valley and up the valley sides. The consequence over time is that the trees along the valley and up the sides have grown up higher than the electricity lines in the valley floor.

Now was the time to recreate the Tunguska event of 1908 in Siberian Russia whereby 2000km2 of forest (80 million trees) were destroyed by the mid-air explosion of a meteor, with no known casualties.

We had to remove all tree that were in danger of being blown onto the power lines. Many were already dead and represented a clear risk as they weakened over time. Some dead pines were already leaning in the wrong direction.

Naturally our efforts to remove the tree should not bring down the power lines. Hence the use of the 6 ton pulley/winch to direct the fall.

Trees and power lines in valley floor

Rope as high as possible up the tree

6 ton winch

Above you can see there was a twist in the chain preventing it from being cranked all the way up the chain

Checking the winch

Getting the rope as tight as possible before winching

Pull!

Garikai puts up with the press photographer. ZESA line at top

George enjoying the press interest. Dead Wattle trees coming down

Get ready to chop the tree and crank the winch at the same time

It can be tricky to coordinate the cutting and pulling

Experts on the job

The outcome of all the demolition – a swath of fallen trees around the power lines

The Tunguska event of 2015

Prehistoric life was discovered as having survived the event

Growing tree fern

Tree fern leaf unfurling

Heidi, Petra & Barcus checking on their ‘pets’ (if you know the story of 101 Jack Russell’s)

Tree House Number 2: Tree carving and cross beams

October 14, 2015 by easternhighlander

The first things to note are:

a) these trees were due to be cut down completely,

b) instead we coppiced them at 5 metres,

c) these trees are fairly indestructible – witness the new growth on 9 out of 10 trees,

d) these trees are ‘weeds’, ie an imported species that spreads uncontrollably.

The trees were deliberately planted at nice 2m spacing, but off to the sides you can see growth from many new seedlings. Again, if you cut down the seedling the roots survive and grow a new tree!