My treehouse, May 2009

My treehouse is now surrounded by tall and thick mahogany trees and a few fruit trees. When we were building my treehouse more 5 ½ years ago, those trees were still young, though they were planted about 10 or 12 years ago. Now that the trees are tall and thick, sunlight can hardly penetrate in some parts of the wooded area, it gets dark even in the afternoon. What is dangerous is that mosquitoes tend to abound, these insects like dark and shaded areas, they don’t like direct exposure to sunlight.


And to think that those mahogany trees lost many of their branches just 12 months ago in a strong typhoon, local name “Cosme”. That typhoon also toppled and killed at least 3 mahogany trees near the house, good that it was structurally strong, it did not tilt when one tree fell on it. The removed trees gave some open space for sunlight near my house.


Notice the top of the mahogany tree where my house is perched. That picture was taken nearly 3 weeks ago. Now the leaves on that same spot are thick. The roof was just repaired 3 months ago.

The roof

The original roof of my treehouse is cogon. It was neatly made, as shown in this picture. After 5 years, some of the roof were attacked by the termites. The mahogany leaves from the top of the tree that fall on the roof, plus rainfall, make the leaves-covered roof always damp and wet, and some termites that managed to go up were nibbling the cogon and wood.


Later it was leaking bad, we have to replace the cogon roof with galvanized iron in one side of the roof. Problem solved.

Cogon roof will work best if there is no tree top above it that endlessly produces fallen leaves, that partly covers the roof from direct sunlight. Here now is the new roof – galvanized iron on the right, and cogon on the left.


Notice young branches sprouting up.


The next problem will be the forever-rising tree top that is pushing up the roof trusses.