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April and May are crazy times. I spent several weeks this spring working as a consultant for a nationally known playground construction company. The work was fun, and the hundreds of volunteers who provide the muscle for the massive community built playgrounds were a constant symphony of goodwill and energy. Quite a difference from hearing nothing but the wind in the willows in Ithaca, or talking to my buddy Wanda the dog at the Horseheads site.
Ithaca College freshman Nick O'Connor lends a hand, using a Maasdan come-along to raise one of four black locust beams that will be part of the treehouse foundation.
In between the planned time away I spent some time in Horseheads, and was able to get the Ithaca treehouse project moved forward. With the GLs set, I worked out a system for raising the 200-pound-plus black locust beams into place. Working solo again has its challenges, but nothing a rock-solid Maasdan come-along and my eager college-aged nephew couldn’t help me overcome. By the end of May, the girders and beams were in place.
That’s worth a few words itself. One of the challenges of the Ithaca project was finding a way to get good space for interior and exterior areas in and around a black willow tree that opens up into 12 main trunks – almost all bigger than 18 inches wide at the planned 12-foot deck height. Some trunks lean, some don’t, and whatever we did had to make sure and allow the tree to continue to do its thing while providing a safe support for about 240-square-feet of usable space.
Locally milled black locust beams ride above a pair of Unalam girders, creating the Ithaca treehouse foundation.
Into this dilemma came Charley Greenwood of Greenwood Engineering. Perhaps the world’s most respected treehouse engineer, Charley is a consultant on this and all future Peacemaker Treehouse projects. After looking over my early designs and measurements, Charley came up with a multi-tiered support system that puts high-strength engineered wood girders at one layer, and ultra-solid black locust beams above them. The girders help support the beams in the middle of their spans – the best place to offer added support – and help bring two of the thickest and straightest trunks into the foundation system. In all, Charley has eight Garnier limb high-strength steel anchors attached to six separate trunks (two of the GLs get cable back ups for added support), and the system still allows for tree movement in all directions. No one can guarantee anything when your load-bearing foundation is a living organism, but Charley’s genius puts this and every project on which he works on the most solid footing imaginable.
With the foundation assembled, we started June ready to start building the deck structure, the platform from which the rest of the treehouse project will rise.
With the expanded cabin and side rails framed, the skeleton of the future pirate ship treehouse can be seen.
Work on the Bond’s treehouse in Horseheads resumed this month. With the ice gone (not as long gone as folks from warmer climates might imagine) it was time to frame the Bond’s newly expanded cabin. The bump out added some length to the rear and, since we’re talking about a triangle here, some width as well. Adding to those dimensions demanded an upgrade in framing materials, but not too much for the tree or the project to handle. The front wall frame, as well as the three-part rear wall structure, were built on the ground and lifted into place over the side rail.
By the end of the month, the cabin was framed and the shape of the pirate ship was now clear to everyone; including the small groups of neighbors and passers-by who sometimes watched work from a sidewalk a few hundred feet away. In the last few days the tree ended that show, drawing a green curtain over the treehouse and making the entire thing – 18 feet long without the bow mast and reaching as many feet into the air – impossible to see from anywhere but directly underneath. Jack’s pirate ship slipped into its summer stealth, and plans for the final construction push shifted into full speed.
