Hi, I was wondering if anyone on here has any experience with floating homes. I was specifically wondering about the floating portion. There is a little information out there; I have seen concrete, plastic, and old barge floats, I'm sure there are more. I was just thinking this may be an option for me as I have a large body of water on my land.
In the northwest (Seattle and Vancouver BC) they also use large logs as floats. Others use hollow concrete floats especially for larger and high-end houseboats. One challenge is maintaining a level float which requires either careful weight control or having a mechanism to maintain a level structure-----obviously being non-level or variations from day to day will provide some interesting problems while you are building. Your bubble level may lead you astray in those situations.
In this area (N ID) the typical float portion is a cedar log raft. There is currently a moratorium on building new float homes (can't allow the riff raff waterfront) so the old ones are rebuilt, or a new one can be licensed as a boat thereby negating the moratorium and removing any bldg dept authority.
Here are some links to building in BC:
http://powellriverbooks.blogspot.com
http://tinyhouseblog.com/floating-homes/float-cabins-on-powell-lake/
http://jemeddy.blogspot.com/
Thanks for the replies and links. This would be on my private 5 acre pond, so no waterfront building moratoriums, but I will have to check with the code enforcement guy to see if this could even be considered a "house" or if it would not qualify for a cert of occupancy, then it would be more like a camper i guess.