Handmade Houseboats: Independent Living Afloat

One of those rare, wonderful books that sets My head dreaming ,and also gives me knowledge ,and the resources to do whats inside of it. Well written informative , and many useful ideas here too. Land , boy the stuff is expensive, who needs it anyway? That's one of the great things about this book it shows how just about anyone can bang together there very own houseboat and avoid a mortgage. HUH, live aboard a houseboat? Yep, that's the ticket, and the author shows You how to do just that. Utilities, no worries, woodstove for heating and cooking, solar power or a generator for recharging batteries, heck there is even the possibility of growing food hydroponically aboard.This book shows You how to do all this and more in a humorous , but always informative fashion.

I SAW A BOAT FORUM THAT RECOMMENDED THIS BOOK SO I PICKED IT UP AT OUR LOCAL LIBRARY. I WAS SO IMPRESSED THAT I PURCHASED A COPY FOR MY FATHER-IN-LAW. HIGHLY RECOMMEND!

First off, its important not to get the kind of boats this author is writing about mixed up with the strange beasts seen on Lake Powell - Conder is describing homes that float rather than those that move around at (relatively) high speed. This is the best book I've come across if you are planning on building a houseboat. Some of the reviewers below criticize it for being dated. True: the prices of materials are off. But most of the information is right on and fairly timeless (Barron's comments [below] are simply not accurate - the book was first released in 1992 - not '53 as he states - he must be writing about another book). The book is inspirational in that it serves to remind the reader that there's more to life than a house on a quarter acre with a mortgage. The bottom line is that this book offers all the information needed to plan, build, launch and live in a floating home.

I read this book, and in August 2005 built a floating 10x12' shed housing a 12kw generator on a 12'x20' barge floating on 34 plastic 55 gallon drums using the methods described in this book. I bought those drums for $11 a piece, and found out later they can be had for $8 or maybe even for free. Yeah, the information may be old, but it's still good. It's a way to get yourself out on the water for pennies on the dollar of what you'd have to pay to buy a used commercially built houseboat, and it'll be new and things inside it will work, and not need constant fixing. I had the barge itself built in 3 days, helped mostly by an unruley 12 year old. It could have easily been 36 x 12' and had a nice little house on it. One caveat: You won't be able to insure a craft built using this method. Even if you don't build using the barrel raft method, there's lots of other good information in the book about houseboats, and I like the Jimmy Buffetesque attitude that the author seems to have.