Interesting build-Houseboat?

Rutgers

Rutgers

Well-known member
After reading the stories of old about guys residing on houseboats in the good gunning areas years ago, I've been giving some thought to building a floating duck camp for next season. I've got a few ideas in mind, and came up with a points to consider:

Size- I'd like an overall platform size of 12x15. The cabin itself will be around 6x12, allowing for a horseshoe shaped shooting area 3 feet wide all the way around.

Transportation-It will not travel under its own power. The main platform will actually be 2 6x12 rafts that will be connected once on site. I plan to use heavy 55 gallon barrels for flotation. My boat will fit under the platform.

Amenities-It will have 2 cots; bunk-bed style that ill be plenty big for 2 guys. It will also have an eating/writing, reading table at one end. Heat and cooking will be provided by either a box stove or LP. Not sure which yet. lighting will be either LP or oil lamp There will be a head of course, and I haven't figured out refrigeration yet. There will be NO telephone!

It will be camo from head to toe with LOTS of natural vegetation. I haven't decided where I will anchor it yet, but I have a few ideas.

Anyone done something like this before? Suggestions?
 
Check out Ed Askew's posts on the floating camp they built this spring.It's big,without power(no problem),but you can get some great ideas.If you have the place to leave something like that,I say go for it.Keep us posted.
 
do not know wether you can get them or not, but pickle company close by uses heavy pastic barrels with a wide mouth and a screw top see them available for $10 each on the side of the road. built a float fora hunting camp 8 years ago 12 X 16 filled barrels with small empty drink bottled with the caps on got them from recycling dump makes multiple small foating chambers in the even of a leak, still floating after 8 years tied to shore for a boat dock.

thought building a blind float having a small hole in the bottom of the barrel with an air vale at the top to be able to presurize and force water out bottom. would allow pulling into shallow water release pressure settel to the bottom. when ready to move pressurize from a portable tank refloat and move.
 
I know that there are plans available on line for a houseboat similar to what you are talking about. I have seen one in person. The boat was about 18'-20' long and about 8" wide. The hull looked like a double ended flat bottom jon boat. There was a small deck fore and aft with a flat top cabin in the middle and it appeared to be built from fiberglassed plywood. The plans were on a website that offers plans for all different types of boats. If I can remember which one I will let you know.
 
You moving south? I'm thinking that the barrel setup would be hard pressed to survive our 3 months and more of ice water. I'm not sure that you could leave it in year round unless you had waterfront property to moor it. Not sure about that 6x12 either...pretty cramped when you get gear in there. You see how cramped my 12x12 is when we get crap in there.
 
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barrels are aspproximately 1/4 inch thick and very resilianlt cna with stand a 22 rifle if not a direct 90 degree shot it deflects. of course once frozen in would stay until thaw. if barrels were just used to float in and out and sunk to borttom during winter would be no problem. location new bern, nc mild climate
 
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I recommend building one and here is why:


I don't have pictures on this computer but when I can I will upload them...A few buddies (Jerret Trevethan, Kelley Adams, and Calvin Moyers) of mine including myself got together and built pontoon hunting barge in 2002 for around $2000 after finished. The platform was 27' by 7' ( 30 foot pontoons) with high sides about 3 feet that cambered/angle up so that we had a 3 foot shooting opening. We used an older (early 90s) 50 hp motor with tilt and trim that pushed it at a brisk pace. Fast enough to go having that much weigth and feeling safe. The outside was covered with a thin .060 sheet metal/aluminium shell one of the guys had laying around on his farm. Attached was a thicker wire than chicken wire that was screwed to the external sheet metal plating. The frame was built out of 1/2" square tubing. Around August we would hit the bottoms for what I have always called Water Weed small stalk resembling bamboo. The boat looked like a floating island when hunted out. Is was set up so the the hunter on the front of the bolt could cook with a removable two burner stove. The front end opened to allow the column driven steering wheel operator to see in front. Due to some of the guys needing money we only hunted 2 seasons out of it and a person out of Henderson, Ky purchased it for an offered $3900.

One successful weekend hunting story out of the boat: (now we had a lot of weekends hunting out of the boat in this same manner that were not so successful on Kentucky and Barkley Lake)

The boat was filled with 22 dozen (from G & H Swivel heads, magnum no names, to $19.00 a dozen blocks) duck decoys and four hunters at one time during the first season we hunted the Ohio River area around Smithland at a location called Twin Sister Islands (You can google map the location). We left Paducah at midnight and was setting decoys around 1:00 a.m. through 3:00 a.m. With sleeping bags and folding lounge style chairs we cranked a large Mister buddy heater and were toasty till shooting hours. You never had to wear a jacket if the heater was on. Ended up with a four limits of ducks by 9:00 a.m. It took us till 1:00 p.m to pick up the decoys and head back to the ramp. When we got back to the ramp we talked about driving the birds home and having one person clean them, pick up some groceries and meet back at the ramp around 6:00 p.m. while the other three went back and setup decoys again for the hunt in the morning on Sunday morning. It took all day to take a limt of 4 mallards per person but we did it. I haven't hunted like that since then but it sure was fun.

I highly recommend it...Don't skimp on all the amentities...
 
If you can get down to South Louisiana this summer you can get this one for free. I build this in 2005 and it's fine for smooth waters but it's scary going across the big water we now have to cross to our new lease. Also, we have too many barges we have to push back and forth before and after hurricane season, so we have to drop this one. We're going to bring it in this spring, take the generator out and decommission it. This is not a bad way to build a floating platform, but if I were to do it again, I'd put strips of stainless steel bar across the bearers port to starboard to keep them from moving outward with time as the barrels work their way up into the pockets. I would give Safari Craft [/url ] a thought as well. Another thought is [URL=http://www.glen-l.com] Glen-l's houseboats esp. the Huck Finn, but I bet they'd cost as much as a Safari Craft and would take a lot longer to build.

Ed.
 
Thanks for all the replies everyone. Sorry I didnt respond sooner. I've actually got something in mind Like Ed posted but the building will be smaller and lighter. I have access to a bunch of barrells for free, and I'm starting to scrounge the lumber from jobsites to build it. I'll post some plans when I get them drawn up. This should be interesting!
 
Hey Paul

We had a 12x10 barrel blind when I was a kid. It survived the ice alright, but the thaw was actually more of a problem. Weather it was the ice breakup, or spring floods I'm not sure, but every spring it had a habit of migrating. It just wouldn't stay put. We hunted up to 5 guys out of it, but spending the night would be another thing.

Chuck
 
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If I were to build another one, this is how I would do it (but what do I know? Not that these are instructions on how to build a barrel barge, just what I might do if I were to get another wild hair if you know what I mean):

barrelbarge2.jpg

It's all pressure treated lumber of course. Stainless fasteners are a must. The carriage bolts are at least 1/2" and they will need to be long, depending on how deep your notches are, I think my notches were 2 inches into both the bearers and joist. Conder recommended 5/8" bolts. You should measure how your bearers will fit with the barrels by doing a mockup of a couple of short lengths of 2x6 as a surrogate for bearers, but it will probably be about 2 1/2" less than the diameter of the barrel. Of course all your barrels have to be the same diameter. You don't need to have much of the barrel protruding above the joist to keep it from getting out while underway, not more than an inch or so. I didn't add the stainless flat bar on the generator barge, but I think it's a good idea because over time, the bearers tend to be pushed apart. You'll have trouble finding stainless fasteners, especially the really long carriage bolts, that you'll need locally. I got mine from Manasquan Fasteners online. You can probably get the stainless flatbar from onlinemetals.com. Then comes the question of what to do with the ends of the barge. I used 2x12's with the bottoms lined up with the bottom of the bearers and screwed them in with large lag bolts in a crossing pattern. This has held up pretty well so far. If there were a way to screw in some metal corner brackets in there as well, I would have done that but there's not enough room to work with the barrels in there. Also, on the sides of the barge I used braces of 2x4's that sat on top of and parallel to the outer bearers to help keep the joists plumb (they are cut to the exact distance between joists, and wedged, screwed, and glued in between them on the sides of the barge only.) Also, you will almost certainly need a few new barrel caps. I had to order those online; they're cheap. Bring a couple of extra barrels with you on your maiden voyage, because one or two will certainly leak on you. I wouldn't fill the barrels with foam. Folks who have done that warn against it.

A key to building a successful long lasting barrel barge is weight distribution. The weight and the barrels that support the weight, have to be evenly matched, otherwise over time the joists and the bearers warp. That is one of the problems with my barge, because although I didn't plan on it initially, I later added an inverter system that requires 8 golf cart batteries weighing about 75 lbs each, and they're all in one corner of the barge. So that corner sits way down in the water and the opposite side is way up, the bearers and joists warping over time to make this worse. One barrel will support 225 lbs half sunk. More barrels where you have more weight like the edges of the cabin, etc.

Finally, when you launch the barge you may notice a little movement. Don't worry about this because once the cabin is one it will lock up solid.

Just another of my wild ideas, I guess.

Ed.
 
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Hi Paul,

Over 40 years ago my Explorer Scout Post built a 36' boat similar to the way Ed Askew's design was laid out. The barrels were held to the uprights with metal strapping and painted with a good grade of cold galvanizing paint. The old boat lasted for over 10 years until some A hole shot it full of holes with a high powered rifle. The boat was about 12' wide and would reach hull speed with 12 scouts aboard when being pushed by the post master's 35 hp Evinrude. I'd guess hull speed was around 9 knots. Other than being way too big it woulda made a great blind. My buddy and I are looking for a real banged up pontoon boat we can buy cheap to make a weekender blind out of too.

Good luck,
Harry
 
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