Best Material to float a house, 5 bedroom

This is obviously so hilarious I have to say something. Since you are only 16 you will have enough time to learn the details of what I will only sketch:

A house needs to have a foundation, that means tied to the ground. How much, how deep, etc. depends on your local building code. Nobody will let you just set a concrete floating house on the green grass. Even if you could it needs to be tied to the ground or it will just float away when the big flood comes. In theory one could build such a house like a floating pier with concrete pilllars to hold it in place, or like a deep sea drilling platform. But nobody would approve it. In theory such a house would have to be completley self sustaining since utilities will vanish in the flood. Water and sewage treatment plants are underground after all and would be flooded. And a floating house is a bad ideea if you are expecting hurricanes anyway.

So what can one do? Well the solution is obvious, after all Venice is still standing. Build a house tall enough to be above the water and sturdy enough to withstand hurricanes. Has the benefit of offering enough space to devote to selfsustaining systems, stores, and other stuff. Would probably look something like a WW2 above ground air raid shelter.

Read New York 2140 by Kim Stanley Robinson for further inspiration.

Or be realistic and move to the mountains. After all nature has already provided. I doubt Switzerland will be flooded soon.

 

That doesn't need so much, during Hurricane Irma in Sept. 2017 I wondered how the Florida stilt houses were doing, and asked Hoyt to send pictures when the ordeal was over, this was at the thread ‘‘Skiff’’ in post #414.

In post #497 Hoyt sent Dec. 2017 pictures of the stilt houses East of Tampa, note PAR's comment in post #502 . . .

 

Yes I know but stilt houses are for warm climates. In good old England one is more inclined to use a more solid architecture. Would also be easier to get a building permit if the house looks "normal". Just because a house has 3m thick concrete walls it does not need to look bad. Just google Hochbunker to see some options, from medieval to modern looking. Here an example that is 18m high with a 450 sqm of penthouse on top. Fits right in with the city architecture. Bunker (Berlin) - Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunker_(Berlin)#

 

Sea-Clusion Floating Homes Ltd https://www.facebook.com/seaclusionltd/

 

Also in Florida you can't get a permit anymore to build a stilt house in the sea, even rebuild once fallen is forbidden, only maintenance on the existing ones is allowed.

Otherwise the Florida coast might look like this by now . . .

Just an example, in Castro on Chiloé Island, west off the coast of Chile in the Pacific Ocean, it's not really a warm climate over there.

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Not meaning the shipyard here on 18 March in 2008, but the palafitos (stilt houses) across the water . . .​

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Castro on 23 January 2007, and on 11 june 2017.​

 

Hang tough Ted, after the stilt aside, that might offer some (illegal in England the way it's performed there I think) alternatives for your floating project, I'll be back tomorrow about your question.

 

Here is one I remember in England from the Grand Designs series

 

Dear Ted

There is nothing infeasible and certainly not hilarious about your project. It is quite possible in Great Britain, and is something that many authorities know they need to be looking at. Great that you have this as a project- is it a school thing?

Both the stilt house and the floating house are do-able.

The floating house, I would venture, is harder. The Grand Designs video that R Watson kindly shared shows a heavily engineered project. They have a reasonably conventional house sitting on a buoyant basement, which sits in a huge sump, in order to keep the conventional house at ground level. In case of flood, the sump is allowed to fill, and the house on the buoyant basement floats up. There is considerable engineering in the guides that restraint the house as it moves up and down, and these will take into consideration the very large forces that would be placed on the structure by the fast moving flood water in this riverside location. The other principle technical challenge is robust, flexible, waterproof connections to services - fresh water, sewerage, power, gas, telecoms…

To my mind, this one is a very British solution! The high cost of this project makes more sense because it is in a location of very high land values.

Do watch R Watsons video...

The Netherlands have considerable experience with this of course, and the examples Angelique has shared would be a good way to go. It’s a lighter touch, more akin to a large houseboat. If you can research some detail on the approach to service connections they use, I'm sure you'll find this helpful. Note that most of these locations are on still water, and are lighter structures than the Thameside one; this will usually mean lighter engineering.

Some of the Netherlands solutions are fully permanently floating, attached to floating pontoon gangways. In this arrangement, the only large amount of movement the flexible service connection has to accommodate is where it connects to the land, and this is a hinging movement, rather than accommodating movement at each house connection. It may also be that the levels of the body of water in which they sit are controlled and kept pretty constant by water engineering (dykes, pumps, sluices etc.) making the service connections easier.

For the record, I am an Architect, and teach the subject at University. I have land in Scotland in the 1:200 year floodplain, and will be building my house on stilts. If I were to do a floating solution, I would favour essentially a steel hulled houseboat, tethered, which in non flood conditions would sit on a simple concrete 'raft' (slab.) The flexible, waterproof connections would still be taxing.

 

The project is hilarious not because of the engineering but because of what a 6 degree temperature rise means. Engineering a structure to withstand a 20m sea level increase and super hurricanes can be done, especially since costs are not a concern. It would be difficult to do with a floating system, but probably not impossible. The problem is how to deal with the rest of the implications. 6 degrees rise is a ecological planetary doomsday scenario. England would be basicly uninhabitable. 95% of all life on earth would dissapear. If this is a school project, it is ment for raising ecological awareness.

 

For flotation I would consider polyethylene pontoons. Polyethylene floats last for years under very difficult conditions on shellfish and fish farms.

 

It is a project I have chosen myself, and I think everyone is overcomplicating it, im only 16, I have designed my house already, however to finish it off. I need a conclusion on what to have on the bottom and how it will work.

 

Mate its a 16 year olds project, not a real planning application in London. Something tonight which is an easy idea for floating would be great thanks. Obviously im no architect, so help would be great thanks.

 

Big concrete raft, at least 3m wider than the house so you have a terrace. 1m high concrete wall at the edge to act as a sea railing.

 

so is this floating and how would I stabilise it. I need a basic idea, but complex justification and explanation if you get me