In the last few years we see a wave of building treehouses around the world. The whole thing began with single treehouses in many forest and garden areas and evolved into the birth of treehouse hotels and even villages in the tree tops such as the Finca Bellavista community in Costa Rica.
A hero of this story is another treehouse builder, Ethan Schlussler from Sandpoint, Idaho, USA, who built his house at 30ft (slightly more than 9m) height. According to Ethan, he “got tired of climbing a ladder 6 and a half million times a day” which stimulated his creativity to invent “the lazy way”.
The invention consists of specially modified bicycle and a counterweight on the opposite side. When he sit on the bike and start pedaling, the counterweight starts descending from the top which lifts him higher to the altitude of the treehouse. When he has to go down, he just sits on the bike and start pedaling in reverse direction. And that’s it! Pretty simple, but some kind of a genial mechanism. The bicycle is tied to a heavy stone on the ground with a metal chain in order to be reachable before usage and before elevation the chain is detached.
However, this is not exactly a lazy way considering that Ethan’s legs work while ascending, but it is at least far funnier than the ladder.
SOURCE: [interestingengineering]
