Homesteading on the water

[hunter63]

Was looking thru the vid's on a different thread...about wrapping your self in a wool blanket....That crash posted a couple of years ago.
Well, there is always a lots of stuff listed, so I started looking around and found this vid about a floating house.

Couple are artists built this and is supposed to be 100% self sufficient...kinda long of flowers and cool music, short on nuts and bolts....but a cool idea.

Kinda interested me after seeing the floating house barges frozen in the ice in Europe.
Also make you wonder of the legalities od something like this????
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDqbfiejLdM&feature=related

[intothenew]

Interesting, and it brings one of my long time dreams to the surface again.

As my knees talk back more, I dream of a medium sized pontoon set up to hunt from. It is legal here, as long as there is no motion from a motor. You can shoot from one, a boat, and of course wet a line. Not near the extravagance of the preceding, but simply functional. Not a homestead, not a BOV either, just a cabin boat. A hot pot of coffee and a warm bed. Perch one night, tenderloin the next?

There is a rather large lake within 30 minutes of home that the COE controls. 80-90% of the shoreline is WMA. It typically doesn't freeze over until after New Year, which leaves all of big game season accessible.

A dream of a geriatric.

[Rick]

Check carefully. Most Corps of Engineers lakes forbid firearms outside of hunting. I've never found one that allowed them regardless of state law. We're pretty laid back here in Indiana about carry weapons but the COE doesn't allow them. Hunting is fine of course and the Corps here provides a lot of public land for hunting but CCW is not allowed.

[intothenew]

If I follow you correctly, it would only be long gun excursions during hunting season, smokepole and smokeless.

[SemperFi]

The key is to not waste your time on COE lakes period, hell you cant even have a dock on there lakes , whats waterfront property worth without a dock? Where I live (on a lake) it is not COE , as far as firearms are concerned it lies mostly on the CCW issue , I dont know for sure about house boats or floating houses (theres lots of em here ) , this is a big lake 1300 miles shoreline , we dont usually freeze although in my cove it almost did last year ,its almost mile to the other side, it would be fun having one I would think of anything as a guest house! We camp out on the dock in early spring , after that we cant ,too many bugs!

[intothenew]

In my case, it would be trailer and put in for a few days/weeks. The 10-20% of this particular lake is composed of State Park and pay-per-view docks, which you cannot hunt. But I have thousands of acres of WMA to hunt, that I have paid for (taxes and lifetime liscense), and miles of shoreline. I would think that water capacity (fresh, gray, and black) would be my limiting factors.

[kyratshooter]

I have been dealing with boats and boat legalities here in KY for the past 6 months and have learned some lessons.

First, start off with a premanufactured hull. Buy a used pontoon that is already registered in your state and build up from there.

In the simple process of turning two sheets of plywood into a boat and hanging an outboard on the tail end I have had to deal with registration/liscensing/inspection with county, state and federal departments. It has not been a whole lot of fun.

[hunter63]

KRS that is sound advice..... even when it comes to homesteading land as well.....if you buy a place that already has a well and septic, all kinds of stuff get 'grandfathered in rather than fighting permits, perks and such.

Somethimes it's better to 'remodel' than to build new, be it a house or boat, or house boat

[kyratshooter]

Yep, I ran into that on my property also. When you start dealing with today's zoning laws it is really amazing. Setbacks, variances and standards are often applied just to keep people from doing what they once did to stay alive. Some areas even control the hight of crops that can be grown or the planting of gardens in residentual areas.

In the current market I paid less for my property than the water tap-on fee and septic tank were worth.

My intent was to tear the house down and start from scratch and I found that it would take $20,000 just to prep the lot and install a new foundation. I gutted the place, remodled every square inch, put on a new roof and installed vynil siding for just the cost of the new "up to codes" foundation.

In addition, I got to keep the pre-utilities underground cistern that holds 2500 gallons that I would have had to remove if I had rebuilt.

[crashdive123]

I've done that whole homesteading on the water thing. Here I am winter camping.:innocent:

http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/ii67/crashdive123/Forum%20Fun/submarinethroughice.jpg

[intothenew]

Not fair, you had one of those kinda sorta forever fuel thinga-ma-bobs.

[Rick]

Man! I'll bet it was pain scrapin' the windshield on that thing.

[hunter63]

I've done that whole homesteading on the water thing. Here I am winter camping.:innocent:

http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/ii67/crashdive123/Forum%20Fun/submarinethroughice.jpg

That you on the left waving....now that's a BOV......come on Zombies I dare ya!

[kyratshooter]

It was once claimed that the last men to die in WW3 would be the submariners.

Can you imagine a world populated only by retired squids?

[Winter]

Hunter, up here houseboats can moor almost anywhere. If you can get a small barge and build a house on it, You are set.

Problem is that anything that floats cost money to keep floating. Add to that a really durable small boat $40k. Offgrid power source, expensive.

[natertot]

When I was in the Navy, I was involved in anti-subsurface warfare. Playing hide and seek in an iceberg was never mentioned in any manual!

Yes kyrat, I could imagine. I have a vision of one of my deployments, only on land!

[Winter]

Are all submariners survival oriented?
http://www.samruby.com/Heroes/Submariner/Submariner.gif


Two types of boats, Subs and Targets.

[crashdive123]

It was once claimed that the last men to die in WW3 would be the submariners.

Can you imagine a world populated only by retired squids?

That has been the grand plan all along........took the planners a while to figure out they better start putting women on submarines though.

[hunter63]

.........
Two types of boats, Subs and Targets.

Gotta love that quote!

[randyt]

I've always found houseboating interesting. There's an old book called River Trapper by walter chansler, it's a hunter-trapper-trader book. It's about a fella that lives on a house boat and traps, wildcrafts and such like activities. I believe it takes place in the 1920's. There another book that I can't remember the name off hand but it's about a fella named Miles Martin. He floats the yukon and its tributaries. Perhaps our alaskan members can fill us in more about that. That took place in the 70's and 80's.

[Rick]

The obvious problem with house boats in northern latitudes is getting iced in. Some of that ice can be pretty damaging to the boat. Some winters we get quite a bit of ice on the lake here and those with floating docks run bubblers to keep the dock ice free and undamaged.

Bubblers, for those that might night know, is just a line run into the center of the dock and air continually forced through the line. The resulting bubbles keep the water disturbed so it doesn't freeze.

[randyt]

there are deicers on the docks around northern michigan. The deicers don't really keep the docks open for use but keeps the ice from moving the piles around and generally tearing things up. In miles martins situation he pulled his boat out in the fall time.

[dscrick]

As a former ASW Destroyer guy I only have one argument for the "Subs and targets" guys. Ten kiloton Nuclear ASROC Rocket thrown depth charge equals "Target and large smoking hole in the water where a sub used to be"