Location: Sparrowbush, NY
Project Name: Little Birds Treehouse
Designers / Builders: Jeremy Shannon and Family
Engineering / Hardware: Treehouse Supplies
Assembly: Rain screen, 2x6 insulated with hemp, INTELLO X sealed with TESCON VANA, 2x4 service cavity with mineral wool insulation
As an architect, Jeremy Shannon once designed homes in the big city. For a recent project, he’s decided to put them in the trees. As you walk past a pond through a field of tall grasses and wildflowers, you enter the woods and come upon your dream destination: A Pro Clima Treehouse! Perched on a wooded hill, three oak and two maple trees hold aloft a multi-level retreat spiraling up into the canopy. The wood used in the structure was pine rough sawn from a mill less than 50 miles away to not only provide for the rustic aesthetic, but also to reduce the embodied carbon from processing and transportation. In a remarkable feat of engineering, this childhood dream was brought to life using lessons from high performance building. The result is a recreational hideaway (that you can rent for an enchanting getaway!) that is higher performing than most average homes on the ground. You won’t miss the forest for the trees when you are literally seeing the world from their point of view. Just look at the build-up of this assembly, which results in an approximately R40 envelope on all six sides of each structure:
- Local roughsawn pine board and batten siding
- 3/4” rain screen cavity
- ½” sheathing
- 2x6 studs, 2x10 floor joists, 2x8 roof joists
- INTELLO X sealed with TESCON VANA
- 2x4 service cavity on all walls
- 1” pine and ¼” birch plywood for interior wall finish
- Rockwool and hemp insulation
The attributes of high performance homes can be best demonstrated through experience. As the project neared completion in February 2024, the team decided to try it on for size and had an inaugural sleepover. During the night, the outside temperature dropped to 18 degrees. With four people and only one of the two small wall radiators installed, the temperature stayed a draft-free and comfortable 65 degrees all night, truly showing the impact of high performance building practices and airsealing materials. Jeremy and his family have built an example where professionals and enthusiasts alike can see, and better yet feel, the benefits of high performance details. The colder months really bring home the importance of good building science principles - continuous airsealing, vapor control, and ample insulation. The insulated service cavity not only bumps up the R-Value, but simplifies airsealing, protects the INTELLO X air barrier, and provides direct insulation to the studs to minimize thermal bridging. Adding in the LUNOS e2-60s for heat recovery ventilation, this project is built for healthy comfort that only true efficiency can provide. Opening this home to the public inevitably brings more awareness to high-performance, low-carbon building practices, proving that even a house in the trees can perform better than average. In discussing the challenges in bringing this project together, Jeremy is humble when he says “framing and pretty much doing any construction while suspended 20 feet in the air by ropes is harder than I expected.”
The next time you hear someone say, we just don’t have room for a service cavity, say to yourself:
“If a treehouse can do it, I can do it”
