Update on foam houses 01/09/08
The New Foam Houses Are In!
They turned out just like I thought they would. One of a kind, light weight, roomy, super fuel efficient. They have beautiful tongue and groove pine on the insides and are built in the form of an arch, which is one of our strongest geometrical shapes and it does many different things, from self banking the house, because the snow can not sit on top. To helping to circulate the heat more efficiently through out the house on the inside so you do not have any difference in temperature from top to bottom. No more sleeping on the top bunk nightmares of dry heat exhaustion. No more freezing on the bottom bunk, from the top bunk guy, turning the heat down in the middle of the night. The first four are 8x12 inside dimensions not outside, with 4 bunks and six holes and rattle wheels and led lighting. With a 15,000 Btu Empire furnace on a thermostat, which I think is an over kill, but better to have too much when you need it, than to little. They are on thermostats so they should be just fine.
Charlie thinks that we can heat them with a couple of candles. But little does he know how many times that door gets opened during the day and you need to recover that heat quickly. The guys in them this weekend we truly impressed with the way they were put together and how functional they were. I do have one of the house with a 7500 Btu Orbit heater, but if it gets cold, which it will. I do not think it could recover the heat loss, from opening the door soon enough. The 15000 Btu will. These are going to be the way to go, for all of us who want to get out safer and earlier than the first of January these days. I do not see the pattern changing any time soon. For us in this business, time is money and not getting out until late in the season the past 5 years, has been a killer for all of us. We seem to always get 5 inches of ice in the beginning of Dec. and then the weather turns on us. With these new houses, we will be out on 5 to 6 inches of ice snow or no snow. That will give us, not only more time out on the ice, but the earlier we can get out after first ice, the better the bite will be.
Let me tell you how this all got going this past summer. I had a guy come and shoot the rim joist of my house with this foam. As we were talking I had mentioned how cool it would be to make fish houses out of the stuff. As the summer went on we would talk back and forth about how we would go about it. With, well let us just call him Charles, engineering back round and my experience in the fish house business we came up with the foam domes as I like to call them. Everybody has there own way of seeing what they are, which is pretty cool too. No one sees them the same way. They are one of a kind and no one else has them but me. I have been thinking about a safer and more efficient way to do the fish houses for 10 years and to have that vision come true is a very exciting thing for me.
These first four are designed for rental use only, so the next ones will be set up for you the consumer. We are working on wheel houses next, and should have a few of them done towards the end of the season for you to check out for next season. All that I can really say about them for now is; you will see them at the sport show next year. They will be totally, self sufficient with alternative power and heat courses and lighter than the first ones we have done. We are trying to keep them less than 2000 lbs. At an 8 x 16 size which will be 1.4 lbs per square inch of weight and 2300 lbs. for an 8 x 20 which is 1.9 lbs. per square inch. The Houses also have the ability to be module, so you can put them together end to end.
If your buddy has one, you can meet up on the lake and join them together with ease and party on boys. They are also so light that they can be pulled with ease on any 4 wheeler or snowmobile. They are so light that the skies ride on top of the snow just like your snowmobiles do. Another great thing is that these are almost totally foam, so they will float. If god forbid something was to happen with them going through the ice, they will just float around. They are basically like a diving bell. Unsinkable and not like they said about the titanic unsinkable, these babies can not go down. The foam is coated with a Rhino liner type of sealer. You buy one of these houses and it is a maintenance free house for life. There is nothing to rot on it, or replace, everything is sealed. Even the bottom of the house is shot with Rhino liner and foam. I will keep you posted on the foam houses wheel house design.
Make sure to check out the video of the ones that I slid together yesterday on the link on the front page. They are 8x24 with just two of them put together and they are designed to put as many of them together as I want to. They each have a seal on one end, to give an air lock between the two houses. They do seal rite up too. I could make them 100 ft long if I wanted too. That would probably put me in the Guinness Book of World Records, for the longest fish houses ever built.
Yaw baby! Success
Be safe
The Rockman and his New Rock Houses!
They do, kind off resemble Rocks!
http://s257.photobucket.com/albums/hh227/johnnirocker/?action=view¤t=8x24foamvideo.flv
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Topic: The New Foam ice houses are done/Check them out! (Read 5398 times)
