Stepping Back

The shock of what happened to my treehouse Tuesday night is starting to wear off. I am now able to step back from the tragedy and see the entire project.

From this viewpoint my mistake is very obvious. I turned a blind-eye to the weight rating of the all-thread. Heck, I didn’t even know what the weight rating was. I just assumed that it was sufficient. I knew my cables could each hold 14,000 pounds. I also knew that the crimps on the ends where rated at 30,000 pounds and the eyenuts, turnbuckles, shackles and eyebolts all fell somewhere in between. But the all-thread was a mystery. I’ve since learned it was not sufficient, hah! I’ve found some suppliers that sell all-thread with a rating as high as 300,000 pounds. That is probably a bit excessive, but I will not skimp when it comes to my next design. I’ve also decided to pattern my cables and beams after a cable-stayed bridge and will triple the number of cables I use, thus spreading the weight over more tree attachment points to avoid what happened the other night.

More cables means I won’t want them running through my house and I’ll need to adjust the placement of the walls. In the end I’ll probably have a smaller house due to the narrow distance between my trees.

Don’t know how soon I’ll get to work on all of this, since the weather is a bit crummy right now, but I will keep you posted on my progress for sure.