Last week, I began the pleasant task of designing a place to live and a boat to float in for the next stage of my journey down the New River and then the Ohio River. This short trip is the preview of my continuing travel along the Great Loop. If the boat is a good one I may live aboard for some years in a number of countries.
I started by reviewing all the houseboat plans and views I could find on the internet. Some of these dated back to Old Popular Mechanics issues from the 1950's. A very interesting set of drawings come from Jay Benford, who designed houseboats with ferry boat lines in the early 70's.
Next, I thought about a concrete structure, because I had once read a book on ferro-concrete yacht construction. I laid out a possible design and figured the weight of it. From this I computed the draft (that's how much water it would take to float it) and decided that I would not always have so much water to float her.
Then, I started thinking about high bouyancy systems, like docks and floats that do not require deep water to manuever. I contacted one dock engineer at Dock Hardware and discovered the sizes of standard polyethylene wrapped foam floats used to float docks and breakwaters. Docks are usually built from such floats crowned with steel, aluminum or wood platforms. Breakwaters use the same floats that are then weighted by concrete to rest low in the water and resist wave travel.
The standard measure of flotation for these wrapped foam floats is 65# per cubic foot. Now, even though the engineer used this figure, I think he over estimates. Salt water lifts about 64# per cubic foot and fresh water about 62.4#. I will use 55# as my design figure so I will not under estimate my flotation. This also gives me a 10% safety factor in fresh water and 15% in saltwater.
The floats come in standard sizes, in multiples of 2 and 4 foot lengths. I think a 4' by 8' by 3' float block will give the best lift per draft ratios. Each block can lift 5280#. These blocks cost approximately $620 shipped to the building site, wherever that will be. So each pound of lift costs about $0.12.
I think twelve (12) blocks would float almost any structure I might use. So 63360# of lift costing me $7600 will be one of my design restrictions.
I paced the slip widths at the docking area of Claytor Lake State Park in Virginia. These can take a vessel of 24' beam, so I will use this as my maximum width, because I will do quite a bit of freshwater docking. Length can be much longer and as long as the boat can turn within its own length at a near stop, it can be up to 50 feet at this same facility.
The image below occured on Stumble and I thought I could design a houseboat to display it. So I need a long first story and a smaller second story for this houseboat. That also give rise to roof garden structuring and solar collections. Ignore the roof here and imagine one that is flat above the mushroom and again above the girl. A sort of USA train caboose shape would be fine.
This two story concept led me to give up on the ferro-concrete building idea completely as a concrete two story building with concrete or even steel walls becomes outrageously top-heavy. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 63,000#, which leaves no margin for safety once furnishings are fitted in.
So I began to explore the idea of floating a prefab steel or aluminum building. These are much to pricey for my pocketbook at the moment, so I thought further and decided that a modification of international steel shipping containers would do the trick.
I am looking into costs for these, but at the moment they really interest me. I am thinking two 40' containers welded or bolted side by side with a third 20' container on top. This would give me two decks and the desired shape.
I will add more thoughts tomorrow. Right now I need to review the Wall Street Occupation statements coming out of various encampments.