May i8, 1912 
FOREST AND STREAM 
633 
Building a Small Houseboat 
By GEORGE ETHELBERT WALSH 
A SUA'IMER spent in a camp has many ad¬ 
vantages over life in a boarding house or 
hotel, but a vacation on a houseboat has 
both methods of summering “beaten to a stand¬ 
still,” to use a slangy expression. The house¬ 
boat is really a floating camp, with the advantage 
of a substantial roof over the head, and hence 
dry quarters in rainy weather with the greater 
convenience which comes from being able to 
move the camping site from place to place on 
short notice without packing up household be¬ 
longings. 
But houseboating to many seems unattainable. 
We have such palatial houseboats pictured so 
often to us that we dream of this sort of life 
in a floating home, but never really expect to 
live it. Few of us have the thousands or even 
hundred of dollars necessary to purchase and 
equip such houseboats. Yet houseboating the 
world over is purely a relative matter, and the 
cost is likewise as variable as the pocket books 
of the people. On the Canton River, in China, 
nearly 200,000 people live on houseboats which 
cost all the way from $25 to twenty times that 
amount. On the Mississippi River there are hun¬ 
dreds of houseboats, or “shanty boats,” whose 
owners live on them through the summer as low 
as twenty-five cents a day for each person. These 
shanty boats are built in alt styles, and cost the 
owners little or nothing to build. 
On the Willamette River, near Portland, Ore¬ 
gon, there are houseboat colonies which line the 
shores for miles. Many of these creations are 
merely cheap houses built on platforms, and 
others are substantial affairs constructed on flat 
bottom boats. On the River Henly hundreds of 
cheap and expensive houseboats accommodate a 
considerable population in the summer. 
ceeds that of an ordinary camp equipment. Such 
inexpensive houseboats furnish as much pleas¬ 
ure, in a way, as the more elaborately equipped 
affairs of the wealthy. The owners who build 
them get nearly as much pleasure in the work 
of designing and constructing as in living on 
them. 
The idea of building your own houseboat seems 
like a monumental task to many, and so it is if 
one allows his ambition to run away with h^m. 
An inexpensive houseboat has for its foundation 
a platform resting on half submerged barrels, 
and this is the cheapest form of construction and 
the lightest. It is one that can be handled bj' 
any one. and the craft is so buoyant that it can 
he towed with a rowboat. Compared with a 
camp ashore, a houseboat of this character is 
a veritable paradise, and one can spend the long 
summer days living on the water at a minimum 
expense. 
Second hand cider, oil or similar barrels can 
be secured at an average price of fifty cents 
each. These will support a foundation much 
better than flat bottom boats or the scow type 
of boat. They can also be replaced at little ex- 
ARRANGEMENT OF BARRELS. 
pense if any of them leak after one or two sea¬ 
sons. Usually a good tight barrel will last three 
or four years before it leaks, and by replacing 
a few each spring the houseboat can be kept in 
condition indefinitely. 
In many parts of this country houseboats are 
constructed every year at a cost that hardly ex¬ 
r 
