nocturnal396
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Subject: Question about building a foundation
Hey everyone. Recently I decided to build a tree house with a few friends as a place to hang out and have parties and just relax in at night being we all love the outdoors. I have built many small treehouses when I was a kid growing up and my technical knowledge of how things work was not nearly as good. It was just a matter of 'lets see how many nails we can put into this thing' lol. Anyway, I started reading some treehouse books and realized the important of flex joints and also of using lag bolts instead of nails.
So the story goes, my friend and I put up a beam between two trees (not super large trees, tall and somewhat slim) about 6 feet in the air and bolted one rather large lag bolt (sorry, don't remember the exact size but it was big) into each side just to test it out. Sure enough, first windy day came and the beam went down as one of the lag bolts snapped in half. This should have been an important lesson in why to use flex joints, but heres where my question comes in. I could not help but to think about all the treehouses I built as a kid that were just as high, in the same kind of trees and had no flex joints. We'd nail the crap out of them and these treehouses stood for YEARS till the woods was knocked down. Not one of them ever came down on their own. The only difference I can think of aside from the nails is that the beams probably werent as long between the trees and the foundations were all triangles, not just one beam from one tree to another.
Now im wondering if I NEED flex joints. It seemed like the thick nails we used actually may have flexed a slight big to avoid what happened with the large lag bolt where the bolt just snapped in half. Some of these tree houses we built actually started to have the tree grow around them after a few years, I had no doubts that they would have been standing 5 or so years later if the woods wasnt torn down. Seemed like maybe the fact that the nails had a bit of give and the triangle foundations anchored all the trees to the next to avoid movement in the wind made them pretty sturdy structures.
what do you guys think?
thanks
So the story goes, my friend and I put up a beam between two trees (not super large trees, tall and somewhat slim) about 6 feet in the air and bolted one rather large lag bolt (sorry, don't remember the exact size but it was big) into each side just to test it out. Sure enough, first windy day came and the beam went down as one of the lag bolts snapped in half. This should have been an important lesson in why to use flex joints, but heres where my question comes in. I could not help but to think about all the treehouses I built as a kid that were just as high, in the same kind of trees and had no flex joints. We'd nail the crap out of them and these treehouses stood for YEARS till the woods was knocked down. Not one of them ever came down on their own. The only difference I can think of aside from the nails is that the beams probably werent as long between the trees and the foundations were all triangles, not just one beam from one tree to another.
Now im wondering if I NEED flex joints. It seemed like the thick nails we used actually may have flexed a slight big to avoid what happened with the large lag bolt where the bolt just snapped in half. Some of these tree houses we built actually started to have the tree grow around them after a few years, I had no doubts that they would have been standing 5 or so years later if the woods wasnt torn down. Seemed like maybe the fact that the nails had a bit of give and the triangle foundations anchored all the trees to the next to avoid movement in the wind made them pretty sturdy structures.
what do you guys think?
thanks