Ever since I can remember, Praew has talked about building a treehouse. If you check out YouTube, you can find that they come in all shapes, sizes and designs.

Today I stumbled across the YouTube video above which is a tour of a resort in Quebec that uses plastic bubbles on platforms as treehouses, complete with beds and other furniture.

My interest is that our land originally had no old big trees on it, so any large trees we will have (any time soon) come from purchasing them full grown and planting them on site. So they wont have large strong root structures for a very long time. This option allows for one to build a simple platform with its own supports on the ground between (or around) planted trees and then install one of these bubbles on it. Compared to normal walls and a roof, I doubt this bubble even gets to 1% of that weight. Resulting in a much simpler platform.

While I’m not a fan of the orange and purple colors that the Quebec resort seems to favor, we have used green or tan “pahbai” (plasticized canvas? tarp?) for awnings in our house and roof cover for our boat dock in the past. We source it from local businesses that will sew it into whatever size or configuration we need. It never occurred to me to ask if they have clear, and if they do whether they can sew a giant bubble like these. But I think it is time to ask.

From the video, there is no support structure at all. There is just a small silent air pump below the platform pumping air into the bubble to keep the shape. Going in and out involves passing through a double door “airlock” to keep from losing too much air each time. (The doors use zippers to seal them,) The description of the air pump as “you can’t even really tell that it is on” reminds me of the air pump on the aerobic sewage treatment system we have. My suspicion is that we can build the platform, source the plastic bubble, and source the air pump easily enough.

My only concern is the lack of a shaded roof. From the video, I would guess that their trees are big enough and have enough foliage to provide enough shade at noon time on a sunny day. Maybe we can put up a horizontal curtain inside the bubble for the occasions where our foliage cover isn’t enough? I guess the air pump also provides ventilation. 🙂

Is this cool or what? The idea is almost too enticing for me not to try it. Pretty much any time I see something like this that is a rather unique and elegant solution to a common problem, doesn’t seem too complicated, and never even occurred to me to do before, I am always tempted to make it my next project.

We’ll see about this one… it is very tempting indeed!

Have you seen anything like this before?