You may remember that Brian and I had some drama with our Floating Home back in February when the unusual heavy, wet snow added too much weight to the roof of our house and it tilted in the water.
Well, we almost immediately scheduled work with a company called Harbor Services, which is one of only three contractors who specialize in floating home repairs in the Portland area. Of course, when I say we immediately scheduled the work, that means they added us onto their list of projects and expected that the work would be done before the NEXT winter storm could come along.
But of course, with floating homes it seems that everything takes longer to get to, to work on, and to complete than with normal houses on land. Estimates for when the work would start slipped from “possibly October” to “beginning of November” to “end of November” to “definitely in December” – which is when the work finally started.
The Fix
When our house tilted, it was basically because the float (essentially the “foundation” of a floating home) was built exactly to the minimum specifications for the width of a float for a house the height of ours. The rule is that a house can only be 75% as tall as its floatation is wide. Ours was that, pretty much to the INCH.
But then add in another consideration for our house: the house was built with a boat garage, and underneath that part of the house there was no floatation. (That is, the logs that run from front to back under our house as our main source of flotation, those logs did not continue under the boat garage.) So there was a gap under part of the house, and that gap provided neither floatation (to help keep that side of the house UP should the weight of the house push it that way) nor additional weight (to help keep that side of the house DOWN should the weight of the house push it the other way, away from the boat garage).
So we contracted Harbor Services to both widen the deck and to fill in that boat garage. The boat garage would become another room in the house, and the widened deck would have two additional logs underneath it on either side of the house – all connected together structurally by extending the large metal I-Beams that run side to side across the tops of the logs under the house.
It would be quite a project!
And now, as of the end of January, it’s still just almost complete.
The metal I-Beams have been extended and attached to the new logs on either side of the house.
The boat well has been filled in and is now a fairly good sized room (as yet unfinished as far as flooring and paint on the inside).
The structure for the deck has been built.
Most of the new deck boards are in place…
But now, at least temporarily, work has stalled because members of the crew tested positive for COVID…
But at least there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, and the work should be completed soon, once the Harbor Services team can all work together again, finishing up this seemingly endless project!
I was hoping that we could have completed project photos to share this month, but ah well.
More updates to come!
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