I’ve seen several instances of prefab “tiny houses” built on pontoon platforms over the past year or so, with two outboard motors and an electric retractable “helm.” What’s driving it, or at least what’s driving it on the east coast, is the TVA threatening to ban floating houses on TVA lakes, so they’re now making them navigable houseboats.
I’ve rented one before on Fontana Lake in North Carolina just west of the Cherokee reservation, it was very nice, only accessible by boat but a standard size pontoon boat with it’s own sheltered attached dock came with it, and the owners would take you out for a walkthrough and demo of features upon checkin.
But, you’d have to be familiar and comfortable with marine or RV-type appliances and power since it had no shore power, just solar panels, a generator with propane tank and a battery bank. Marine toilet with holding tank, too, which work quite well usually but you can’t go turning on the exhaust vent fan until after you’ve flushed, otherwise you’ll be drawing odor into the house from the holding tank rather than expelling it. Flushing a marine toilet isn’t all that simple either, foot pedal halfway down to put water in the bowl, foot pedal all the way down to flush.
I could live that way, it’s not bad really, you just have to plan your power use and your water use, not a big deal unless you have a large number of people in the house. Becomes second nature pretty quickly and easily, don’t even have to think about it after a few days. A bit of a pain running through the propane on dark rainy or snowy days though, I’d imagine.
We have a 40 ft sailboat that I stay on for weeks at a time. I have to show non boaters how to use the head. Ours is a manual hand pump. Don’t flush the tp since we only have a 25 gallon tank and it’ll fill up pretty fast. It’s a small space so if you have to do #2 please walk up to the facilities. I took the shower out so we use the ones in the facility. Don’t drink the water that comes out of the faucet. I use sweetener but it stays in the tank too long. It’s probably ok but I keep bottled water on board and there’s a faucet right outside that I fill a gallon jug up with for coffee and to cook with. The cooktop and oven are electric and we’re hooked up so no problem there.
I could live on our boat even with that. You just get used to it. Lol
When we were anchored out we’d use the marine bbq to cook with and a solar shower in the cockpit. You just figure easy ways around stuff.
>>What’s driving it, or at least what’s driving it on the east coast, is the TVA threatening to ban floating houses on TVA lakes,
I’ve seen some of the squidbilly ca-ca that’s at the root of the threats, and they should be banning many of them.