Small, independant living units, on water ? - Possible ?

The Wild West was hardly wild , an Armed Society is a Polite Society.

,,, restrictions like fear of violence,,,

Not here is Florida USA , as the Castle Rule prevails , someone that kicks in your door can expect a face full of 12Ga , with no recourse.

The choice is Freedom from Government or Freedom for Government

Since government is Force and Fraud personified , Less government , and mostly local would work best..

Politicians are like Baby Diapers ,they should be changed often for the same reason.

I vote with Frank for Freedom, not servitude to the far off buroRats! And their idea of some ivory tower Utopia. Not UN agenda 21 !!

 

humorously: Wonders why it's so relatively hard to get people on the political forum I go to to talk about boats?

 

>and registering boats means looking a bit like a boat<

I doubt that that is a written requirement.

To register it must look like it could FUNCTION as a boat , which would be easy to demonstrate if required.

In Ft Myers City Marina there is a monster beauty parlor floating on a barge hull , with 2 tiny outboards mounted.

Its a boat,, sez the state numbers , even though the hook up to the dock is hard wired.

>New York City adopted Building Zones as early as the 1870's
"As early as the 1870’s and 1880’s,<

The purpose was the locals hated the garment industry pushing loaded garment racks to the big stores ,
Macys et all down the streets they lived and walked on.

The reply to the Zoning Police was delivery tunnels.

 

I suppose part of the conundrum of talking about 'living' in such and such an environment, that part of the 'environment' is other people.

On this forum, I have lost track of the times that people have built or bought boats to get away from 'society'

While it seems expensive to live on the water, the extra money required to avoid the delusioned discontented elements is looking like a real bargain.

 

>While it seems expensive to live on the water,<

Not at all expensive in a good location with a good vessel.

The expense is mostly a concern of land functions ,land your dink, park your car, get mail, dump garbage , get water .

IF a vessel anchored out can solve these hassles the cost of living aboard ...in modest climates... can be very low.

The biggest problem is usually refrigeration , as its a huge power draw , and Servelle propane reefer will go over a month on a 20 lb bottle of propane .$20 a month.

LED lights and a solar panel , now under a buck a watt solves lighting and entertainment.

A gravity tank solves the water system, and a composting toilet any no discharge rules.

Whats left?

 

Grey water, unless you dump it overboard. In a way it is the most troublesome since it often has phosphate soap residue from bathing and dish washing and because of the volume you have to dispose of. It just depends on how you feel about sending it overboard.

 

Why does this last bit make me think of a potential editorial cartoon where two house boats are at anchor opposite each other, their owners sitting on their respective deck glaring at the other: "Darn socialist hippie!" thinks one while the other mutters something about "Reactionaries!" under his breath.

 

For those having something more than an old barge/houseboat with outboards....maintenance.

 

Interesting Fred, I also think a little more effort should be put into 'the systems' we might utilize on these liveaboard vessels/homes/cottages to make them compliant with land based rules. Over the past few years there have emerged a lot of good possibilities. Certainly the sewage problems are a number one item that needs to addressed.

A couple, particularly an older couple, that practices modern recycling, generate less trash, and in a more orderly manner that can be well managed

We all need to be paying more attention to gathering some of our own 'personal' water from our roofs, etc, much as the islanders find necessary. And of course a plan to use our water in a conservative manner. The future will demand this of both water and land based residents.

Is that true?? I'll have to look at that again. I had always discounted propane refrig as it doesn't work on heeling sailboats, and can be problematic in a 'motion' situation.

Agreed. And battery storage options and inverters are getting ever better.

Aren't there some good marine toilet systems on the market right now that offer totally clean overboard discharge?
How about these?
http://www.microphor.com/html/sanitation-marine.html
http://www.microphor.com/pdf/MSD-HowSystemWorks.pdf

http://www.raritaneng.com/products/waste_treatment/holdntreat.html

http://www.raritaneng.com/products/waste_treatment/electroscan.htm

http://www.boatus.com/boattech/articles/msd.asp

 

> I had always discounted propane refrig as it doesn't work on heeling sailboats, and can be problematic in a 'motion' situation.>

Gymbols work , but sitting house boats will seldom be heeled very far.
The RV folks have no problems with un level sites , as long as they can stay in bed with out rolling out.
The Servelle units are made for the Amish , and in homes there is less objection to thick insulation.

Actually slight motion helps the coolant circulation and reduces gas consumption.


>Aren't there some good marine toilet systems on the market right now that offer totally clean overboard discharge?<

NONE are allowed in NO DISCHARGE areas that are becoming more popular with our ignorant politicos.

 

Heh ... "No discharge" ... recently I've been saying that a working definition of "politician" or "Congressman" (more specifically) would be someone who'll pee in your Wheaties and expect a 'thank you' for doing so.

 

Servelle vs Servel

Did you mean to spell that as Servel, I did not find Servelle?? The Servel units are manufactured by Dometic now?

I did find this warning on older gas units:
https://www.cpsc.gov/en/Recalls/1998/CPSC-Warns-That-Old-Servel-Gas-Refrigerators-Still-In-Use-Can-Be-Deadly/

I also ran across this page,
http://www.eco-fridge.com/index.html

and a helpful list:

 

This whole No Discharge thing is stupid. The ocean and bays are really big and the tides come and clean things out twice a day. I think everyone in the harbor and marina ought to be able to just pump it overboard. It won't be around for very long and what harm can be done: the ocean is huge! People have been pooping and peeing outside on the ground and into rivers and bays for ever and ever everything is OK. There are no dumb No Discharge zones in China and India or Blangledesh they have lots and lots of people, too many in fact. I once took a boat trip on the river in Bangkok and there was all kinds of poop and other stuff floating, but the people there looked just fine. If pumping overboard was bad there wouldn't be so many people in places where everyone did it and they would all be sick. This is just another government rule to make free people into slaves by controlling everything we try to do. Besides there is nothing at all in Scripture about not peeing or pooping into the water and if the Lord is OK with it who are we to question Him?

 

As far as leveling goes, the vapor absorption refrigerators for rv's are typically rated for 3 degrees side to side and six degrees front to back tilt and they work fine going down the road. Household units are often more sensitive than this.

Power for refrigeration can be supplied by solar using holding plates and two-speed compressors. They run on high and freeze the plate when there is solar to spare, and they run on low off batteries as a night holdover when the plate is melted Low is controlled by a thermostat in the box and high is controlled by a load manager or simply by a voltage sensor on the solar array. This greatly reduces power consumption. So do chest-type box designs.

In general, living small involves a degree of power management and task scheduling that is a bit foreign to modern society, but people seem to adapt to it quite willingly. If you have a 3k inverter, that's what you use. If you have a 300w inverter as I do on my boat, that's what you use.

My rv has a 50A onboard service, but there are four of us on a 110 amp distribution breaker. That's why it's a host site, it has limited power available. Most sites in the park have 3 sites on 110 amp or 4 on 125 amp. About 20% have their own 200amp or 100 amp service.

Currently, the smallest ac made is about 4000 btu. One thing that needs to happen is to get a 2000 btu unit on the market. It isn't much cooling, but it can certainly make a difference in the evening when the place is shut down.

For small living, I would spec 600w of solar, 3 size 27 batts for the house plus one more of each for each person, holding plate refrigerator, 2000 btu ac per bedroom, 1500w diesel genset (but I would prefer a fuel cell), propane/diesel cooktop, propane/diesel heater. Propane ups the tech quite a bit, and the efficiency goes down at a given cost compared to diesel. But it is cleaner and the rv business has some good appliances. Propane probably represents an initial 50% cost premium at a given efficiency level (assuming you combust all the propane outside the hull and living spaces). I don't really know if I should be more paranoid of propane than diesel, but I am. I'd be ok with burning diesel inside if there are CO detectors, but I think propane probably does "small" better.

Dockside, I want a showerhouse, a laundry, a food court with prep areas and grills, and four machines -

1. Ice chest vending bagged and block ice.
2. Potable water station vending (new) standard heavy duty bottles of water for direct connection to the boat.
3. A waste machine that works the same way. Load the transfer tank, shut lid, push button. Machine empties the toilet tank and recharges with chemicals. Onboard systems can concentrate/dewater the waste by a factor of four or so.
4. Propane exchange and fuel cell cartridge exchange. Maybe flow cell electrolyte exchange down the road a bit. If we get to lithium ion batteries, perhaps a battery exchange, but that is a an inconvenience right now except for electric dinghy batteries. They simply weight too much to exchange daily.

The boat itself should have dedicated dinghy dockage that is rock stable, such as a platform grate that elevates. All replenishments should be able to be installed and removed while standing in the dinghy on the dock grate. Ie no carrying stuff around the boat and no pouring liquids, just open a hatch and slide out a tray and drop in the replenished cartridge, plug in a hose, and close it back up. Additional tankage for longer boondoggles might be an option, but for general liveaboard duties, provisions for 10 day endurance and an average of four days between replenishments should be enough. I reckon the vessel at about 12000 pounds plus 3000 pounds per person up to five.

 

I am surprised by your pro-discharge opinion in light of your low opinion of poor homeless. At any rate I can say that our society is too freaked out about feces and how it is handled. There are lots of sanitary rituals in the tora & bible but the bubonic plague is the real origin of public feces phobia. As wasteful as our standard practice is, they should be more open to alternatives. Most americans can't even stand the thought that a major portion of our rivers are water treatment effluent -treated and known safe.

I think that living on the water in houseboats stands no chance of survival politically if it emits waste to the environment that homes on the land are not allowed to. Waterfronts are community jewels, how can we expect to justify crapping in them? The onboard septic tank systems won't do. Adding chemicals just makes it worse. I would go so far as to say that communities don't want you anywhere near if you are plumbed to pump 'blackwater' overboard. Urine and wash water might be defensible with the right environmental soap. My thoughts are that humans only produces a small mass of feces/day. The standard practice of adding water to it results in 10+ times the mass of stuff that is considered, and must be handled, like crap. On land the water is cheap and needed for transport. In a boat crap stays in place and the boat moves to dispose of it. Composting is a plan, but do we really want to keep this crap in our costly little boat for two years? My treatment would be immediate desiccation -crap is mostly water by weight. Once desiccated it is compact, light, less repugnant, easy to transport or simply incinerate at a net energy gain.

If zero effluent seems extreme, think about how enjoyable your life would be traveling to new locations, meeting new people, and having to explain to everyone each time how it's really OK that you are crapping in their pricey waterfronts. Never having the poop conversation -"priceless!"