2nd test of the Rockboat concept. On the way to build a floating home

My obsession at the moment is to look into how to build a floating home with a completely new way of thinking. My idea is to build it in the same way and with the same materials used to build a house.

About my progress on building a Rockboat

The hull is the equivalent to the house foundation. Making it with watertight spray concrete on Rockwool, should be possible in theory, at least . So to test it out and avoid expensive failure I have to make different approaches to the task with scaled down models. This is my second test .

For the model I can only use a thin layer of plaster due to the weight. A full scale Rockboat can have armoured concrete between 5-7 cm and still have a shallow-going hull for use in canals and lakes .

The models are made from casual building materials I have had laying around the basement, but it gives some impression of a real houseboat .

The rear has a self emptying deck. For the sake of simplicity the Rockboat has no rudder nor engine. But the rear deck can be fitted with one or two outboard engines.

For the first test I just kept the boat in a line.

The test was on a local lake and it was a little windy so it was hard to judge from the test this day how the hull split the water. The water dynamics is improved, from the previous test hull to minimise energy consuming bow and aft waves.

Link to the 1st test Rockboat

The hull was made quite flattened at the bottom to allow shallow water use, but the test revealed that it lacked direction stability, particularly in the windy weather this day. This was kind of  predictable, so my backup plan is to fit a keel to the hull. The estimated depth for the full scale model is up to 50 cm, so a keel of about 7 cm doesn't add too much to the total depth.