Tree platform

Intro

At the end of the first year of high school (2016), me and my classmate Andrea decided to build a tree platform. I guess both of us were inspired by the TV program "Treehouse Masters" of Pete Nelson.

Already at the beginning, we knew that we wanted it as high as possible and in order to not spend too much money, we opted to build only a platform (floor) and not a complete treehouse. The first batch of work was done in the summer of 2016, but in the following years some improvements and maintenance were made.

Tree choice

Before starting the construction, we had to choose the tree on which to build the platform.

By looking at the wood near my house, we found a chestnut tree that was perfect for our project. In particular, he was more than 18 meters high and with a lovely forking of the branches at about 12.5 meters from the ground. At that level, the tree formed a sort of natural "V-shaped" cradle that was perfect to place over the main beams of the platform.

Platform construction

The structure of the platform is made of wood and is composed of two main beams that are supported by the tree branches.

The beams are tightened to the tree with a couple of threaded steel tie rods that pushes the beams against the tree and generate a friction force that limits the sliding of the beams. Of course, the only friction force is not enough to keep the beams in place. For this reason, a couple of artificial 45° branches were added to the tree to support the beams and to prevent them from rolling.

Once the beams were in place, a series of equidistant wooden planks were screwed to the beams to form the grid necessary to place the floorboards. Over the grid, a series of floorboards were placed and screwed to the grid.

In the photos above, the "V-shape" of the branches are clearly visible, as well as the the two main beams and the grid for the floor. As for the dimensions, we decided to adopt the following:

• Main beams: 65x65mm
• Grid planks: 50x20mm
• Floorboards: 1250x60x12mm (6 pieces)

At this point, the platform was ready to be used.

Elevator tests

So far, the only way to reach the platform was to climb the tree using a harness and a vertical rope. In the summer of 2017, I decided to build an elevator to reach the platform more easily.

Given that the tree had a twin trunk, I opted to build a secondary platform on the other trunk a couple of meters below the main platform. The idea was to build a pulley system that would allow me to move from the ground to the secondary platform using a counterweight, and then a simple wood ladder to reach the main platform.

In order to build the elevator, I first built the secondary platform and then I had to build an artificial beams connected to the secondary platform that could support my weight and the counterweight togheter. This was accomplished by using iron cables and a quite big trunk.

However, the overall system (even if conceptually feasible and working) was not very practical and safe. In particular, the pulley system was not very efficient an introduced a lot of friction that made the system very hard to use. Because of this, the counterweight needed to lift me up was definitely too heavy and the system was not very safe. Moreover, also the descent was easy to control.

For these reasons, the elevator was never used and was dismantled in the following years. However, the secondary platform was kept and used as point of arrival when climbing the tree using the harness.

Reinforcement and upgrades

In the summer of 2017, the platform started to show some signs of wear.

In particular, the floorboards were starting to be fullfilled with water and some non negligible deformations were starting to appear. Moreover, the platform so far was sustained by some iron cables the connected the trunk the the extremities of the platform. However, all those cables were in the middle of the passage and were very annoying when walking on the platform.

For these reasons, I decided to reinforce the platform from the bottom, by adding 4+4 diagonal beams that connected directly the floor to the trunk in order to sustain the weight of the structure.

In order to reinforce the structure, I started my drilling the necessary holes in the trunk and conect the additional beams to the floor by forming a sort of "X" shape. Each beam was accurtely measured and cut in order to fit perfectly in the structure and form a 45° angle with the floor and the tree.

Once the structure were in place, the platform was much more stable and the rolling movements of the main beams were almost completely eliminated.

Now it was time for the floor to be replaced. In the photos below, it's possible to see the platform before and after the replacement of the floor.

Conclusions

Even if started as a "some days project", the overall project continued evolving and improving over the years. Starting from the simple platform, I added a secondary platform and experimented with an elevator (which miserably failed).

After the reinforcement, the platform is still in place after more than years even if it's not used very often. Basically, the only one that uses the platform regularly are squirrels, birds and other animals that live in the wood and have the capabilities to climb the tree.

Even if the project is tecnically closed, in my mind there will always be the idea of implementing a functional elevator to reach the platform. In particular, I'm thinking about using a couple of old electric motors taken from awnings to build a system that could lift me up and down in a more efficient way. The only downside of this, is that I should bring the electricity to the tree every time I want to go up, which might not be very practical.

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