Tree House Number 2: More Walls and Roof

December 25, 2015 by easternhighlander

Edmore sighting his lines for the roofing trusses – actually the rafters. Its the foundations that are inverted roofing trusses!

Edmore sighting his lines for the roof

Sight lines where the rafters will join the tree

In the tree tops with spirit level!

Gouging holes for the roof beams

More gouging

Trees were harmed in the making of this production

Walls and rafters, trees and trusses

Fufura (giant butterflies)

Roofing slats going on the the rafters

Trusses and rafters

Roofers in action

Didymus

Is that a tree in your roofing?

Nice view of the ongoing construction

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)

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!