Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Houses that Float?

I was thinking about people who really love to live in places like New Orleans and the Gulf and people who like to live near the ocean just like I do on the west Coast in California on the Pacific Ocean.

I realized in thinking about it that people who live on the ocean where there are hurricanes (in the Gulf and now whole East Coast) it might be better to live in something that resembles a boat that can float rather than a standard house. If you know that Hurricane Sandys and Hurricane Katrinas are going to be once every 1 to 4 to 15 years then it could save a lot of money if your house was more like a large metal fishing boat than if it was a standard house. It might take a special kind of permit in your area, but something that floats might not need repairing in a Storm surge or flood. You would only need something sunk deep into your property made of cement to chain the boat like house off to. So, even if the design was a houseboat on land, that could work too. And there wouldn't be damage to be repaired all the time either because the boat could stay tied off even if the water became 1 to 10 feet deep during 1 day every 1 to 4 to 15 years. So, allowing people to get permits for a houseboat or to park an older fishing boat on their property might save a whole lot of money for insurance companies (likely billions over the next 20 years or so) from Maine on down to the Gulf Coast of Florida, Louisiana, and Texas.

If people really love to live somewhere, "Where there's a will there's a way".

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