Slashdot Mirror
Back to the Trees
circletimessquare writes "This story should excite the nerd in anyone. Build a luxury treehouse! The New York Times reports on an entire subculture devoted to an idea which sounds funny at first... but really, why not? Much serious discussion in the article about the technical considerations involved in treehouse construction. Also mention of 'treesorts' at the bottom of the article (one being called 'Lothlorien Woods Hide-a-way' lol). I hunted down some links to two of the big players mentioned in the article, TreeHouse Workshop Inc. and the World Treehouse Conference. No mention as to whether or not they support Banyan VINES (sorry, I couldn't resist)."
Uggggh ....
...
/i:protman.ini
/nc
..... it's been many years, but that stuff still haunts me :)
I really didn't need that flashback
I see horrible memories of BeyondSnail and IM III......
Yikes.
device=c:\banyan\protman.dos
@echo off
c:\banyan\e2131
ban
bind
yikes
I hope you didn't catch that poor tree on fire too.
Banaaaana!
This reminds me of when I had a tree fort as a little kid, ah the good old days.
X(7): A program for managing terminal windows. See also screen(1).
I especially like the integration of Solar Power. Plumbing may be a bit of a challenge. But armed with an effective WIFI-solution, one could stay up there for hours, days even, with food.
'ta
I mean, you're basically building on something that rots. And is high up. This doesn't seem like something I would do, be it just for a cottage or something fun, or be it a house or hotel. Plus, trees get knocked over quite often; hurricanes, theunderstorms, gales, snow, etc.
Also, it seems one of these would be a massive lightning rod, if you were to wire it.
As cool as it sounds, it just doesn't seem like such a great idea. Kind of like using lighter fluid to shoot tennis balls out of coke cans. Not that I've ever done that...
No mention as to whether or not they support Banyan VINES (sorry, I couldn't resist).
Apology DECLINED.
...idea which sounds funny at first... but really, why not?
"And the world was run by DAMN DIRTY APES!"
Heston is da bomb yo!
You have to rember that trees are living so thereforth they grow and react to stimuli. A Tree House (depending on the type of tree) is probably good for 10 mabey 15 years then branches start making the house crooked or a branch putting a lot of pressure on a window. As well as nails in the brances cause discoleration in the wood (that spreads threw most of the tree) as well as stibility during hazordess weather. Concreet celer 10 feet under the ground is a good solid foundation compared to a bunch of roots the width of 4 inches and graduadually decrese.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Hellooooo Lightning Storms!
Seriously, what kind of home-owner's insurance do you have to pay living up in a big tree? Rotting? Fires? Freak elephant attacks?
I think we've found Bill's secret lair.
"Ford," he said, "you're turning into a penguin. Stop it."
This seems like something for over-indulgent parents to give their kids, not for something exciting for adult nerds. Sadly enough, the dimensions of this house seem just large enough to compare with my freshman dorm room at college.
As long as there is a Second Amendment, there will always be a First Amendment.
Ironically, if a treehouse owner fell out of their tree, and ended up in a wheelchair, they'd have no way of getting back into their house. How do you make one of these handicapped accessible? Maybe a really long ramp? Or maybe create an elevator up the trunk? ;-)
Very popular slashdot journal for adul
No mention as to whether or not they support Banyan VINES (sorry, I couldn't resist)."
(Score -1:Troll)"It's not your information. It's information about you" - John Ford, Vice President, Equifax
I've been working on a project over the past few years in my back yard every summer. I've built a large treehouse with electricity and running water in to my in to the the /massive/ walnut tree in my back yard. It is currently a luxurous 2 levels, and I'm considering adding a ground level to it.
Reminds me of G. K. Chesterton's short story "The Singular Speculation of the House-Agent" from "The Club of Queer Trades". A character (Lieutenant Drummond Keith) is involved in a scuffle and disappears. He has left his address as "The Elms, Buxton Common, near Purley, Surrey", but when some aquaintances go to look, there is no house of that name. The hero of the series, Basil Grant, then goes along and finds him in a tree-house in an Elm tree on Buxton Common. He then has the great line:
"The second [thing] is to remember that very plain literal fact always seems fantastic. If Keith had taken a little brick box of a house in Clapham with nothing but railings in front of it and had written 'The Elms' over it, you wouldn't have thought there was anything fantastic about that. Simply because it was a great blaring, swaggering lie you would have believed it.'
Project Gutenburg has the book
I had a lean-to. I accidently torched it one day though.
Oh, and I used to keep a tent setup in my backyard in case I stumbled home drunk at 3 am and I didn't want my parents to catch me. Does that count?
Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
Bah. Even the trees were a bad move; we should never have left the oceans. ;)
Now, all I need is sharks with fricking laser beams attached to their heads, and my plan for world domination will be complete!
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
...why?!
Trolls lurk everywhere. Mod them down.
Beware people!! Slashdotting and overheating treehouses...might burn them down!!!
Yeah, I'm drunk alright..
Ok, if you are actually going to spring for indoor plumbing (read: A place to poop), how are you going to get it there? What if the tree tips over and fecal matter starts shooting everywhere? *shudder* Trees should be left to monkeys and little kids. They don't use the bathroom anyways.
I would prefer a hobbit hole. Nice and cozy, fireplaces, but plenty of natural light. Maybe staffed by underpants gnomes.
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
Where do they put the toilet in these things?
AC
Some friends and i built a crazy treehouse back when we were in high school...
:)
-It had twin skylights (made from a storm door),
-The walls were made from the giant political sign they would put up in vacant lots around town. (basically just particle board),
-we had two full rooms AND
-a small porch where we could sit and look over the "valley" (there was a stream nearby, just down the hill).
-A full size door connected the two rooms, and the front room had a window.
-we also had a rope swing off the porch which was WAY cool.
it was roughly 6 feet off the ground (the tree we built it on was one of those three-trunked varieties, kinda strange.)
Needless to say, some punk kids found it like 6 months later and trashed it... of course our craftsmanship was so good, all they really did was smash out the windows!
oh well, good times.
~Matt
Anyone got a wired treehouse? Imagine sitting in Bart Simpsonesque treehouse surfin' the net. ph33r that.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Years ago I read about a family living in a treehouse somewhere in Montana or Wyoming who was being hunted by the "housing code police" because they wanted to check the treehouse for construction code violations, etc. I wonder if the family was ever found? Also in the same article I read about a family living in a cave who was also being hunted for the same reason. More power to these people who want to live the alternative housing lifestyle! I hope they never got caught.
When I was visiting some of my in-law's relatives in China in 1997, one apartment had a section that reminded me heavily of a tree-house. It was clearly "hacked" together in bits over time with winding hall-ways. I don't know about it's safety, but it was pretty cool to walk around in. If you want to make some changes you just get some boards, nails, and a hammer. No need to call in contractors and get permits, etc. I have never seen anything like it before. I suppose you could call it a "multi-level shanty town".
Table-ized A.I.
Check this out.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
here ~Cyno01
Plumbing is no problem. Just glance down before unloading. Make sure there's no cops or unfriendly neighbors around.
--TheOrangeSquid Is it any wonder things seem so awry? We swim in a sea of confusion and don't have to think to survive
"Darling, this is marvelous! You're so wonderful.......ants, ants, ANTS! Damn you you f8cking geek!"
Table-ized A.I.
Doesn't excite me at all. My freaking job is all about trees. Why would I ever want to live in a treehouse? I'll leave that kind of fantasy to the moronic city-dwelling tree huggers.
Son, that's not Windows shit.
That's DOS shit.
And like I said, it was many years ago. And paid the bills then.
These days, I'm enlightened. I'm a Unix admin by day, a Unix (Mac OS X) user at night.
We're used to build houses out of brick back here in Europe. As a result, we're not as crafted as the americans of building wooden structures, and we're missing out on the experience of how to build a house, or a tree house out of wood; I don't see myself building a tree house out of bricks in my back yard :(
--- Sigmentation Fault - Comments Dumped
One word: snakes.
I remember encountering this as a user on a university network around 94 or so. What was the deal with it? Did it suck? Details, I want details! Thanks!
As for weather, it sounds like they only build these in areas with mild weather. Although, I will grant you, even in San Francisco we will occasionally get a wind storm that will uproot a bunch of trees. Maybe the weight of the house makes the tree harder to uproot? I would think it would do the opposite by raising the center of gravity, but I'm not sure.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
They use extra strength bolts, and use them as sparingly as possible, spaced at least a foot apart. They also claim that the trees will adapt to the house, growing to support it rather than putting pressure on it. I'm not 100% sure if I believe that last bit, and clearly this is not what you want to build if you want a house you can pass on to your grandkids. Still, I think it's obvious that they know a hell of a lot more about building treehouses than you or I do.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
This huge elm across the street, been there over a hundred years... split in half and destroyed four cars in the process. Glad I wasn't up there reading or on the computer at the time.
Question: would that be like reliefing one's youth? || reviling one's youth? :-)
'ta
So, I grew up in an underground house, and it's actually a mixed blessing. On the minus side, you have to mow your roof, it can be freakin difficult to move furniture into/outof the house (unless you have an access garage or elevator), and people generally think you're nuts. On the plus side, underground houses tend to be fire/earthquake/tornado/blizzard proof, and the utility bills are rather low, because of solar and geothermal energy, and you also get to live in a hobbit-hole of sorts. The biggest problem, however, is that there is no market for underground houses, because Muggles/Sleepers/Luddites don't understand the concept... the best real-estate appraisal we can get is about $100K, because we can't get the house un-registered as a "basement house"... never mind the fact that it's got marble, custom stone work throughout, can withstand most any natural/unnatural disaster, etc. We've sunk way more money into the house than we're ever going to get out of it.
If you ever find/buy a dormant volcano, contact me and/or my brother, and we'll build you the undergound volcano fortress. We got the architectural blueprints already...
Anyhow, in an attempt to make sure that this post isn't ranked as a troll or flame-bait, I'll point out the story of the wolf and the three pigs who made their houses out of straw, wood, and brick. Better to make your house out of brick/stone than out of a treehouse, it seems to me...
hmm, is it just me, or is the site REALLY slow? well in any case, i set up a mirror.
It was windows 3.1 shit too, it was even windows 95 shit (if you didnt have 32 bit drivers).
Does anyone remember the episode of The Fresh Prince of Belair where Carlton goes to sulk in the treehouse and Will follows? That place was massive! It was like a reduced version of the summerhouse.
The Will Smith quip was when someone else got into the treehouse and asked if there was a toilet in there.. and he said.. 'yeah, third door on the right down the corridor'.
mogorific carpentry experiments
I had an idea a while ago - with the advances we've been making in DNA, is there any way that we could get "treehouses" to grow naturally in a few years? Make sure the roots are good and deep on a good foundation to prevent it from falling over, then do "spot-DNA-splicing", where you'd insert the appropriate DNA instructions into the appropriate places over the course of years to make the tree grown into the appropriate shape. Could you make branches grow into a perfect staircase by tricking the tree into thinking that they're actually spaced according to how the tree would normally space its branches? Could you get the tree to make them flat?
A lot of questions, and a lot of unknowns, but - like the space elevator - I think we may find it within our reach in our lifetimes.
Last post!
Last fall I visited a friend on Maui and we stayed in the "Treetops" treehouse at Tree Houses of Hana. It was fun, but we were a little unprepared, as at least in this case, it was basically camping with a roof, a bed and a hot shower. Not much in the way of walls, but a roof ;-) I enjoyed it, but it's not for everyone. They do have one that is much less rustic as well though.
There's a book I read years ago, Copernick's Rebellion (Leo Frankowski), where a mad-scientist-type produced genetically engineered giant trees that would grow into nice houses, with rooms inside the trunk and enzyme-filled composting toilets and so on.
Seemed like a good idea to me at the time. The only problem with the trees in the book was that sometimes toilets would sprout in the middle of beds and digest people in their sleep.
put this seed on the ground, and water it. It may take a while.
It may have potentially been Winders 95 chit, but I don't know; I had been Converted by then.
....
...... :)
As for Winders 3.1; no, it certainly wasn't Winders 3.1 stuff. Winders was simply another application that ran on top of DOS. What I mentioned above were DOS drivers and executables; none of it was Winders-based....
There was a Winders 3.x Banyan client at the time, but we found it to be such a POS that we didn't use it... we just stuck with the same stuff that had been working for years
Somehow I doubt Warner Music is still using Banyan these days
--NBVB
Ooooh. Banyan Vines. That was rough.
The question is, am I the only 18-year-old who got it?
--Bennett Prescott
Former Lord Of Packets
It makes sense that new growth would not interfere with the treehouse, the sun, rain and other plant supporting conditions for new growth would be away from the house. higher growth might droop on it though, depending on the tree species (weeping willow, for instance). I am not a coward, only anonymous.
Relieving.
Withdrawal before climax is very ineffective and those who try this are usually called "parents."
I briefly thought of building an arboreal home, complete with monkeys serving margaritas. It was sometime after the DMCA was passed.
But then I figured that someone would sue me for reverse engineering the methods of training monkeys to serve margaritas, and such is history.
To guard against falling trees, rotting, storms.. etc.. use lots of padding. Develop the entire house with padding, and then when it falls, you'll just have a minor brain trauma from bouncing around inside.
-------
"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
-- George Orwell
Australia's Coober Pedy (in South Australia)
has a large number of underground homes.
Even closer to the exclusive Adelaide Hills
we found some underground houses.
The obvious advantages are:
- low heating costs &
- low cooling costs
In short, a very energy-efficient home form
Coupled with a solar hot water system,
a fuel cell or wind-power system & a
quiet air circulation system (out with CO2
& radon gas; in with oxygen-rich air,
possibly full of nice local fragrances),
this type of house really rocks, especially
if it's built into a hillside, so you have
a terrific view out your front viewport...
and you also get to live in a hobbit-hole of sorts
This has been covered previously here on Slashdot.
I'll point out the story of the wolf and the three pigs who made their houses out of straw, wood, and brick.
In the version of "The Three Little Pigs" that I heard, the wolf only wanted to borrow a cup of sugar, not knowing how stingy his porcine neighbors were. Blowing the house down? That was an accident; the wolf had a cold. But this doesn't change your point that brick construction survives great winds better than thatch or wood.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I had such good memories of the treehouse in the Disney film version of Swiss Family Robinson that I recently watched it on DVD for the first time as an adult and it still makes me want to live in one. And
this could be a cool way to spend your birthday.
My name is Carlos Montoya. You share files of my music. Prepare to die.
.. a converted dead mall, from the '70s with the Logan's Run architecture and/or kitschy stuff like wood panelling, faux brick, fountains, etc.
Who knows, it happened to factories and warehouses..
I can't imagine why you'd want to build a treehouse without a clear roof, but I've never heard of anyone doing it. Perhaps it's cost prohibitive...
Would be awesome during thunderstorms....especially if you happen to have a significant other in there with you.
Kind thoughts do not change the world
willow's not a great choice (for a treehouse). Some reach 100 years but generally it's much shorter. The wood's brittle too.
I just spent the whole day trying to get one 2x6x10 beam up in a tree for my treehouse. All I have to show for it are bruises and scratches. Those things are heavy.
The underground houses in Coober Pedy are the most popular, followed by things like mud brick and maybe strawbale, for their ability to withstand heat.
In NZ however, a brick house has less value than a weatherboard. This is because the place is very earthquake prone and bricks hurt a lot more when they fall on you and they are more likely to fall than weatherboard which has better flexibilty.
They've put most of their favourite stone buildings on stalks of rubber, so the whole place can wobble like a jelly and only the rubber gets stretched.
So I guess I nominate rubber tree for tree house construction.
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
The Ents will surely raise hell on this one I tell you..
Ooh, my first flamebait!
Do you realize, Mr. Moderator, I was talking about his age, not starting a political fight?
These days, we got to put disclaimers around jokes!
I'll rename her to Luthien and lock her up in there until she's about 21.
:)
(if you don't get it, you need to read more Tolkien
With a tree you get the central load-bearing structure, and the branches for free.
Seastead this.
Another interesting tidbit, Hanssen was a big fan of "The Man Who was Thursday". In fact, that was pretty much what got him busted.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
Obligatory post: the Battletech Treehouse. All other tree houses are inferior :P
There is a great book by Ken Brower, "The Starship and the Canoe" about Freeman Dyson (the Physicist) and his son. The son lived in a treehouse in British Columbia, Canada and worked for a lot of years to duplicate the ocean going canoes of the historical local tribes. Freeman, the dad, was working on a nuclear powered rocket (A-bombs exploding below steel plates). The twoof them never spoke.
I've always thought of tree houses as an insult to injury. First, you're wounding the tree, that's ok. But then you're attaching another dead tree to it. It's almost like beating someone with their own arm. The trees in the forest must riducule thier members with dead trees nailed to them. (its funny...laugh)
Cthulhu Saves.
I think my karma supplies are healthy enough for a few -1: Redundants.:)
For Jonny Brock and Clare Gorst
and all other Arlingtonians
for tea, sympathy, and a sofa
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
This planet has-or rather had-a problem, which was this: most of the people on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.
And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches.
Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.
And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, one girl sitting on her own in a small cafe in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything.
Sadly, however, before she could get to a phone to tell anyone about it, a terribly stupid catastrophe occurred, and the idea was lost forever.
This is not her story.
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
sorry! ;-)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I would think that if unfriendly neighbors were underneath while you're seeing a man about a horse, it'd serve them right.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
NO GIRLS ALLOWED! Kind of like Slashdot, come to think of it....
IAAL
Gentlemen (and Ladies),
m e. html
I'm surprized at you. I would think that comments would be slightly more positive on this topic.
As to the issues raised I can directly address some of them.
First - I have actually stayed in one of the treehouses in question. Quite a pleasant experience actually.
Second - I am disabled and partnered with a service dog (Ted).
http://www.treehouses.com/treehouse/treesort/ho
The treehouse was the peacock lodge. So named for the incredibly detailed carved wooden door. It was quite posh, having electricity, running water and a dorm sized refrigerator. We stayed in late October/early November(post season actually) Overnight temps ran to the mid teens(F). Ted & I were quite cozy.
As to the engineering, these folks are for the most part professionals and their engineering is top drawer and very well documented. Michael has had numerous run ins with the local planning commission and has prevailed primarirly because his structures are over engineered. If you closely examine the links in this story you'll find that Micheal freely uses Outriggers (Poles supporting the outer edges of the structure).
As to the handicapped issue - Michael's resort is not in any way handicapped accessible (although someone with a limited mobility disabilty such as myself can manage quite well) Due to a restrictive county goverment Michael is not allowed to rent lodging in the treehouses to the general public at large, only to friends and family. (Michael - while a bit gruff, is really quite easy to make friends with). Clearly putting the ADA burden squarely on the shoulders of the local goverment. Also these structures are more like private residences than a multi unit structure such as a hotel and as such would be exempt from ADA (as I understand it) in much the same way you and I are not required to have handicapped accessible ramps in installed in our homes.
As to the general question about the tree(s) themselves - Tree selection is a critical part of the pre-build engineering. Some trees are simply not suitable. Those that are are strongly rooted and in generally grow up and out not around, particuliarily at the site selected for structure supports. Also a technique developed by these folks allows for an ingeneous free floating support. These folks LOVE trees. Their second order of business is to protect and care for the trees themselves. The first order of business is safety of their structures. Something rather reassuring when you realize that some of their structures are built as high as one hundred and twenty-five feet off the ground.
As the general question of accessibility - several treehouses have been built with some kind of an elevator. Nor is it strictly a requirement that such an arrangement be neccessary. Take a close look at Disney's Swiss Family Robinson treehouse. Access can be arranged via a ramp from a nearby ridge for example.
Now as to the question of a Network connection. I have personal knowledge of at least two people who are using WiFi in their treehouses. One has wired their treehouse for electricity and the other uses a battery powered laptop.
also ecological responsible:
r .h tm
http://www.rogerdean.com/architecture/willowate
My opinion is the opposite - would like to rip out all the NT/2000 crap and go back to a system that worked. (and it was unix based)
Did you know that all those US tanks running around during Desert Storm had a Banyan server under the hood? And that soldiers were using the Banyan chat program to share targeting info?
I hope they aren't using Win2K servers for this war - the outcome may be different...
Are you implying that I'm old, cause if you are then you are wrong!
X(7): A program for managing terminal windows. See also screen(1).
p.s. What's an incinerating toilet? It sound dangerous.
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
>> Michael Moore is an idiot, and a piss-poor excuse for a human being [newsmax.com].
And "NewsMax.com" is such an unabashed right-wing propaganda machine, they have about as much credibility as MAD Magazine. If you're looking for objectivity and journalistic integrity, look elsewhere.
"NewsMax.com: It doesn't matter whether it's true, as long as it makes liberals look bad.(TM)"
Nurse Donna: Oh, Groucho, I'm afraid I'm gonna wind up an old maid.
Groucho: Well, bring her in and we'll wind her up together.
Nurse Donna: Do you believe in computer dating?
Groucho: Only if the computers really love each other.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...