Posted: Fri Oct 26, 2007 10:09 am Post subject: Houseboats
As I posted in the "Today I ... for a PO future" thread some days ago, I have recently bought a houseboat. Somebody said this should have its own thread, and I see it's a good point.
Unfortunately, I don't have much free time lately to surf the Internet, so I will only be able to update this infrequently. But if anybody else is interested in the matter, I will try to answer any questions posted.
I'd say a houseboat is a good option if:
a) You live by the coast or riverside, and think the sea/river is a wonderful environment.
b) You don't own your home, but you'd like to because it gives you the option to change it in any way you want, including generating your own electricity.
c) You have some amount of money saved, but only a fraction of what you'd need to buy a house, and are scared stiff of getting into a mortgage in the current economic situation.
d) You want to reduce your monthly spending, possibly with a view to working part-time. (Mooring is far cheaper than rent, even in posh marinas. I'll be paying for the mooring about half what I pay for my rent, and I've chosen the expensive marina).
e) You'd like a home that is built to stand rough weather and wouldn't suffer in a flood, in case climate change gets nasty.
f) You'd like a home that can be moved to other locations, if your current location turns out not to be a very good place to be, and could be moved even if there wasn't any oil available at all.
The most difficult part of living in a houseboat is finding a mooring that will accept houseboats. It's useful to know that most places will turn a blind eye to people living in boats, as long as they don't bring any trouble, even when their official position is that they don't accept liveaboards. But if you are doing that, your boat will have to look 'boaty' (no box-shaped houseboats) and have an engine (most places would like to be able to move your boat from a mooring from another).
A good thing about boats is that they come in all shapes, sizes and prices. So if you keep looking for long enough, there are good chances that you will get what you want at a price you can pay. Prices are a lot more variable than they are for most other things, because every second-hand boat is pretty much unique, with its own history, advantages and disadvantages, and sellers are as varied as boats, with very different levels of interest in selling. The downside of this is that you will have to do a lot of research simply to be able to ask the right questions.
If you have little money but are willing to work hard for a long time, it's possible to buy an empty shell, work on it for six months to a year, and end up with a very comfy houseboat. I know people who have done this.
In my case, I had between a third and a fourth of what one-bedroom flats go for in my area. A new boat of the size of a one-bedroom flat with all the nice features you would like costs about the same price as the flat. With the amount I had, I could still get a rather nice second-hand boat, but I would have to decide which things I could do without. The three basic options within my price range were:
a) A boat I could live in straight away, but not very 'boaty' (a river boat and/or a boat without an engine)
b) A project boat, that would need some amount of work to have a home-like interior and/or decent seaworthiness
c) A small boat, somewhat claustrophobic but liveable and seaworthy.
My choice was option (a), but I know other people would have made other choices. I got a boat with a very nice and comfy interior, but without an engine, on the very limit of seaworthiness. (It was initially a river boat, but I was advised that it could go to sea in good weather and even in bad conditions would be difficult to capsize, just not very maneouvrable). Research convinced me that I could get a second-hand engine in it at a reasonable price, and significantly increase the value of the boat by installing one. This weekend I'll be looking at a second-hand engine with the help of a friend that knows about boats. _________________ What are you doing about peak oil?
I am doing this
(click on the www button) v
Joined: Sep 16, 2004 Posts: 4280 Location: Southwest WI
Posted: Fri Oct 26, 2007 11:07 am Post subject: Re: Houseboats
Doly-
Houseboats are popular around here (i live near the Mississippi River). I'm wondering:
Where are you? You don't have to be specific, but i'm wondering what the climate is like
Have you been a "boat" person before buying this? (I have a 16ft Jon boat).
Will you purchase and inboard or outboard motor? (guessing outboard, if it doesn't have an engine currently).
If you are purchasing an outboard, will you go 2 stroke or 4 stroke, and what size and how many? (Some houseboats around here have 2 big outboards or one big inboard.). 4 strokes are pricey and 2 strokes are very cheap now.
A few weeks back i took a tour of a LARGE houseboat that had been gutted and was being rebuilt. The structure was sound, but the interior needed replacing. This thing was huge! Vaulted ceilings, loft above, big living room, etc. Too big for most, but neat to see what could be done.
Pics? If i had one i'd anchor it in a bay in the summer and commute by kayak! There was a guy who i think was living in his sailboat down at the park here in town this summer (there is a levy with docks that you can tie up to). Bad thing about his location was waves, LOTS and LOTS of big waves from speed boats.
In some ways i wish my wife and I would have done something like this and not bought this money pit i like to call home. Yeah it has its upsides, but at least in a boat the zombies have to swim to get you! _________________ "Oil is going up because we use too much oil, and the capacity to replace reserves is dwindling"
-President Bush 11/07/07
Posted: Fri Oct 26, 2007 12:00 pm Post subject: Re: Houseboats
I own a houseboat as well. _________________ "When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." - Stephen F Roberts.
Posted: Fri Oct 26, 2007 1:13 pm Post subject: Re: Houseboats
For all of you, houseboats owners.
Do you need a skipper license or something alike?
Are *you*, naturally in addition to your boat seaworthy...river worthy...can you swim?
Do you rely on land based services like electricity etc?
What are maintenance expenses of such boat (I think, these can easily go higher then maintenance of small house is)?
I am living in old fishermen village and believe me, none of those is living on his boat.
I know that many Dutch are doing that, but may be it is only Dutch specifics.
Joined: Oct 16, 2004 Posts: 1379 Location: Appalachian Foothills of Virginia
Posted: Sat Oct 27, 2007 9:05 pm Post subject: Re: Houseboats
There are multiple options when thinking about 'house' boats. Having one that can move across distances without gas/diesel will allow more options in tight times. Of course, knowing how to operate a large sailboat will take study and practice.
Joined: Nov 20, 2006 Posts: 120 Location: Tasmania
Posted: Sat Oct 27, 2007 9:16 pm Post subject: Re: Houseboats
Houseboats (or boats of any nature) are an interesting idea. But .. how can you possibly live without a garden?? (Having just endured a painful bout of sciatica after shifting some enormous terracotta pots about the garden so I could plant tomatoes in the best spot, and having got all dirty and sweaty earthing up the spuds, and then weeding the gooseberries, I could actually find the garden-less existence fairly appealing ).
Boats are not for everyone, though. I have friends recently retired who bought a boat in England and spend their lives swanning up and down rivers. In winter they are freezing, they can't stand being in so confined a space together (how long they will last together on this boat I have no idea), they can't grow food and are forced to pay through the nose for shop prices, and it costs them a small fortune to keep it going. I imagine boats have their own particular freedoms and their own particular problems, like anything else.
This guy has some experience retrofitting houseboats to become sternwheelers. To me, this makes abundant sense, since you can greatly increase the fuel efficiency, and do away with the annoying problem of the motor sticking through the hull in the back of the boat, which causes your stout ship to leak because these seals inevitably wear out, if you have it parked in the water, which you would.
Some of these things run on diesel, so no problem converting to biodiesel if you can get it.
I am thinking with junk Hybrid parts (motors and batteries from wrecked priuses) and PV panels, you could conceivably come up with a way to run this thing off of PV for a few hours a day. In fact, if you were really smart and had a way, you could figure out how to use the paddle and the river current to recharge the batteries at night. I do not know the details on this however. The trick would be to find a way to get everything on the same voltage, so that you would not have to use energy-wasting transformers to convert from one voltage to another. Someone that has done this conversion for a car can tell us how to do it.
The second problem is the "head". Normally, the locals are going to frown on you going off into the wilderness and pumping out the head into the waterway. I believe there is a fee for head pumping at your local marina, but I think all of this can be managed.
Everything else is adaptable to RV-type equipment, and has all been done before.
There is a "lifestyle" among owners of this type of boat, going up and down the Ohio River and Upper Mississippi all summer, attending various festivals, charging people a few dollars for rivereboat rides, etc. and then head for Memphis or New Orleans or hole up in the cheapest one of the little river towns for the winter.
I do not think the light has come on among these people yet in regard to PO, or some of them would have tried the hybrid idea.
I have not checked lately, but for awhile, Craigslist has a pretty impressive number of houseboats for sale for pretty cheap down here in hillbilly territory, because of the drought.
I am intrigued enough with this idea that if you do it, I will visit you physically and see how you did it so that I can do it.
Posted: Sat Nov 03, 2007 9:19 am Post subject: Re: Houseboats
To be fair, I do own a Yacht Brokerage, so...
http://www.ronsyachts.com _________________ "When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." - Stephen F Roberts.
Posted: Wed May 07, 2008 12:38 pm Post subject: Re: Houseboats
Houseboats are going to save a lot of marinas, in the long run, provided they have proper sewer and electrical. The days of boating recreationally in any larger motor boat cruiser, that requires a large moorage space, are so over, for most people.
Marinas HAVE to start getting back to their roots and providing inexpensive housing for people.
I had a moorage space I owned free and clear in Washington state, and tried to interest people here in the idea last year, when I sold it...not because I was trying to make money, but because it was a cheap alternative to housing. Noone bit. As soon as people in the area heard it was up for sale, there were three simultaneous offers, right off the bat.
If you can arrange it, living on the water, preferably out of hurricane zones, is a great bet right now, if the price is right.
Posted: Wed May 07, 2008 12:44 pm Post subject: Re: Houseboats
Cornelian wrote:
Houseboats (or boats of any nature) are an interesting idea. But .. how can you possibly live without a garden?? (Having just endured a painful bout of sciatica after shifting some enormous terracotta pots about the garden so I could plant tomatoes in the best spot, and having got all dirty and sweaty earthing up the spuds, and then weeding the gooseberries, I could actually find the garden-less existence fairly appealing ).
Boats are not for everyone, though. I have friends recently retired who bought a boat in England and spend their lives swanning up and down rivers. In winter they are freezing, they can't stand being in so confined a space together (how long they will last together on this boat I have no idea), they can't grow food and are forced to pay through the nose for shop prices, and it costs them a small fortune to keep it going. I imagine boats have their own particular freedoms and their own particular problems, like anything else.
How can you live without a garden...whine. How can people afford to live with huge mortgages? The idea is to get your costs and debt down as far as humanly possible. There is no way an ability to grow some of your own food is going to offset the costs involved in home ownership.
The cheapest thing you can do is buy a boat slip, on the cheap, get a semi-rotting hulk you don't plan to take out recreationally, for say, 30 t0 40 grand, and just hunker down.
Joined: Dec 07, 2005 Posts: 1741 Location: Australia
Posted: Sun May 11, 2008 8:15 am Post subject: Re: Houseboats
In the right area, you at least have a lot of seafood.
And couldn't you get a fair amount of vegies, herbs, berries etc, if you put pots hanging off the railings, and on the roof top etc.
Sure beats living in an appartment _________________ Lets take a ride, and run with the dogs tonight
In suburbia
You cant hide, run with the dogs tonight
In suburbia
- Pet Shop Boys
Posted: Sun May 11, 2008 8:18 am Post subject: Re: Houseboats
skyemoor wrote:
Hey, did you let your domain name name expire?
No... I sold the business.
And moved on to my houseboat! _________________ "When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." - Stephen F Roberts.
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(Having just endured a painful bout of sciatica after shifting some enormous terracotta pots about the garden so I could plant tomatoes in the best spot, and having got all dirty and sweaty earthing up the spuds, and then weeding the gooseberries, I could actually find the garden-less existence fairly appealing 
