Kids Tree Houses - Many Hours of Fun Year-round

Children love to spend time outdoors and explore their sense of adventure in kids tree houses. As a parent, ensuring that your children have an interesting and safe place to play outdoors in the yard means children who are having fun and letting their imagination take over. As long as you teach your children the basics of safety as they climb up and down their kids tree house, you will be able to help your children play plenty of imaginative games while they spend their time constructively and energetically.

Kids Tree House Ideas

A tree house will free your child’s imagination and become a castle, a ship, an island, a spaceship, or a new planet, depending only on their current interests. By building a sturdy tree house in your backyard you will be gifting your child hours of fun over the years. While kids tree houses are a fun play area in the outdoors, parents need to ensure that young children are supervised when using it. Also, a tree house can cause stress to the tree, so select only mature trees that can withstand the weight of the tree house and its occupants. If possible spread the weight of the tree house over more than one tree or branch. You might also need to obtain local and municipal permits before you build a tree house. Constant trampling of the soil around the kids tree house will compact it, making it difficult for the roots to breathe. As such you need to take additional care of the soil around the tree house each year, adding more compost or loosening the soil to prevent damage to the tree.

Ask your landscape expert to check the soil around the base of the tree and treat it to prevent long term damage to your tree and tree house.

Effect of the Wind on the kids tree house

A strong wind will make the tree house function like a sail and put additional pressure on the truck of the tree. To minimize this stress, you need to place the tree house a third of the way from the base of the truck, not further up.

Best Trees for Tree Houses

The first step to building a tree house is selecting the right tree. Ideally, pick a hardwood tree such as oak, hemlock, beech, or fir. The load bearing branches should be at least 8 inches in diameter. While the branches need not be very high, they should be high enough that people do not bump their heads against the floor of the tree house as they walk past.

Build the Tree House Platform

The platform for the tree house should be built as close to the main trunk as possible. Moreover, it should be braced using diagonal bracing that is secured to the base of the trunk. The tree house platform is unlikely to be a square, but that is okay, as long as the platform balances well and can support people on it.

Leave Space for Tree Growth

When building the platform and roof, leave some space, two or three inches around the trunk to allow for future growth. This will ensure that the tree is not constricted or strangled. tree house for kids

Keep the Tree House Floor Level

Before you build the rest of the tree house, you need to ensure that the platform or floor is level. This can be done by spreading the weight of the platform across other tress or branches, or bracing the weight against the main trunk or cantilevering the platform.

Assemble the Kids Tree House at Ground Level

Before building the walls and roof of the tree house on the platform, complete as much of the tasks at ground level as you can. This means assembling the walls and roof at ground level, and taking the help of another person to hoist them to the platform where they can be fixed as needed.

Floating Bracket Support

One of the main issues with building a tree house is ensuring that the tree is not damaged and it continues to grow. You can use floating bracket supports that do not cause much harm to the tree. They are flexible and ensure that the tree continues to grow. You should use large bolts instead of through bolts since this will cause less harm to the trunk. Also, you need to use fewer large bolts instead of many small bolts since the latter will cause more damage to the tree. A tree which is not damaged and constricted by the tree house will live longer, enabling the kids tree house to survive for a longer period of time without any danger to the children and kids who play in it and underneath it.