Senior Citizen, Trailer Pirate

How do you like these apples!

I think this is outrageously cool. A DIY houseboat made from a caravan and barrel pontoons. I fully intend to be wealthy before I retire, if not, I might build one of these and find a large body of fresh water to float it around. I did some research. EBay sometimes has listings for old caravans that have axle trouble and/or dodgy electrics. They go for a song; check this out:

trailer

From the description: IT TOWS OK AND ALL RUNNING LIGHTS ARE WORKING ALL TYRES OK AND THE BRAKES, WIN IT TOW IT AWAY. SOLD AS SEEN PLEASE DONT BRING IT BACK!!!!

Clean out most of the junk inside, put in a double bed, a gas wok (for vegetarian stir fries and mushroom and tomato omlettes), and float that mofo. Assuming a four berth caravan weighs about 2500kg I'd want the pontoons to support 5500kg or so, maximum displacement. So that's 28 heavy duty 55 Gal plastic drums (208 liters each), 14 per pontoon lashed seven a side around a pair of aluminium pipes. No way that's sinking. Many recycling centres will give plastic drums away free or for a token charge, if they've contained something toxic they can be hard to resell and many small businesses aren't likely to bother. You can buy them new for US$20 or so, I personally prefer to make things out of stuff from the trash. More character that way, gives a history.

More aluminium pipes laterally between the pontoons to cradle the caravan chassis. Take the wheels off the caravan, strap it down, and we're about done. Some welding to attach an outboard motor, bitumen paint on the underside, maybe some wooden decking over the pontoons, a dinghy to tow behind it, and an anchor. Furnish to taste.

Bonus: Make a bigass kite to pull it with. And a pirate flag :-) Getting old is going to kick teh bottom.

Via Modern Mechanix

Created 2006-10-16 21:55:30 by 279 and filed under things