2017 Fish House Build

[Lip_Ripper Guy]

Once again, back by popular demand, THE 2017 Fish House Build.

Here are some of the features:

1) Frame- 8'x 21' custom tandem axle hydraulic frame.  I should be picking this up in about two weeks.  It will be galvanized, and should last longer than me.

2) Exterior-All aluminum smooth siding.  Down to two colors 1) Construction Orange, or 2) Pepsi Blue.  Going to have to decide very shortly.  The orange is awesome for directing people to your location, but I feel like I should do something a little bit different.  I wanted "Extreme Green", but I can't find it anywhere locally.  

3) Insulation-"Extreme insulation package".  It will be 2 3/4" of spray foam in the roof & walls, with a 1/2" foam board in the interior, for an "extreme" double thermal break.  The floor will have 1 1/2" of high density board foam, and 2" of spray foam.  This design, combined with the heat system, may make this the most efficient fish house ever built.      

4) Heat- In floor hydronic heat.  It will consist of aluminum sheeting over the frame, 1 1/2" of high density board foam, and a layer of aluminum sheeting over the top.  Pex will be run through the foam, and special heat transfer plates will connect the pex to the top layer of aluminum sheeting.  The system won't freeze down to at least -50, and will have a propane and/or electric water heater with a small (totally silent) circulator pump.  This is greatly simplifying the design, but gives a good general idea without giving my future patent away    

5) Interior-Walls will be a pine tongue and groove, cabinets will be pine, and the ceiling will be a mix of wood and galvanized sheeting.  My hope is that the shiny galvanized sheeting will act as a reflective layer, and help reflect the heat back down towards the livable space.  That may or may not work, but the design looks super cool.  

6) Lighting- All LED lights.  Interior lights will be a recessed 12 LED fixture, 3 LED hole lights, a special "in-Catch-Cover" single LED, red LED fishing lights, (10) exterior porch lights-3 on each long wall, 2 on the back wall, and 1 on each V front wall, and a roof mounted strobe that will be visible for miles.

 

Anyone can feel free to ask questions along the way, and any feedback or comments are welcome.  Stay tuned!

    

[Lip_Ripper Guy]

The 2012 Fish House Build lead to "hundreds" (yes hundreds-copyright Common Man) of PMs and phone calls regarding building fish houses.  I always offered up two pieces of advice to those wanting to do their own build.

1) Buy all (most of) your materials ahead of time.  This is pretty self explanatory, but saves tons of time, and ultimately money.  

2) Do drawings to scale of EVERYTHING.  I use Google SketchUP.  Now that I have a lot of hours experience with it, I can draw almost anything I need to in 10 minutes.  I've been using CAD systems for the last 15-20 years, but for those less technically inclined, graph paper works great. 

The first drawing I always make is an overview of the floor plan.  This is the obvious foundation for everything else (electrical, windows, framing, etc).  This remains in a bit of a 'sketch' phase until I get the frame (and all materials) and can figure out exact measurements.  With having most of my critically important materials (for measurements), this a more final drawing of the floor plan.  The only real adjustment I'll have now is for the exact hole placement.  

 

Step two for the drawings is figuring out the framing, and how the siding will be placed.  The goal with this is to make the most efficient use of all materials.  Here are a couple of my framing drawings.  The RED studs are where the siding seams will be located.  These are the studs that no matter how much on the fly engineering you end up doing, cannot move.   

 

These drawings also help generate my cut list.  This is version 1 and will take several more, but I calculate how many of each length stud I need, and then figure out how to have the least amount of waste.  

When my last build was done, I ended up with less than 10 lineal feet of waste, out of 672' of material.  

Edited March 18, 2016 by Lip_Ripper Guy

[randerson]

So what are your plans when it comes to welding the walls to the frame with the bad gases put out by the galvanized steel also do you coat your framing with anything?

[Lip_Ripper Guy]

12 minutes ago, randerson said:

So what are your plans when it comes to welding the walls to the frame with the bad gases put out by the galvanized steel also do you coat your framing with anything?

Excellent question.  The initial plan was to grind the zinc coating off, but after seeing how thick/durable it is, I realized there wasn't a practical way to do so.  The frame builder is going to paint the top perimeter of the frame, and said that it will come back from galvanizing as bare metal ready for welding.  I'm expecting to do at least a minimal amount of grinding/sanding.    

The outer part of the steel framing has the 3M VHB tape applied to it, and the 3 remaining sides are covered with spray foam.  

Once the floor plan, and framing sketches are done, we move into 3D models of the interior/exterior.  This is the step where we realize if there are interior/exterior conflicts.  For example, if you have a 36" countertop height, and 36" tall window, you have 12" remaining for a backsplash, window trim (top and bottom), and a wire shelf above the window.  It all has to fit together, or you'll end up with a bunch of "on the fly engineering".  

According to Lip_Ripper Guy's dictionary: "On the Fly Engineering" 1) A needless waste of time, primarily spent fixing mistakes caused by lack of 3-dimensional planning.

     

[Moon Lake Refuge]

^{Something to think about, we just had ours galvenized this summer.  With a grinder it really didn't take much to grind off small spots of galvenizing in 4 inch strips every couple feet around the frame.  We used these spots to weld to then had a can of liquid galvenizing that we went back and touched up the areas we grinded.  Looked seamless when we were done.  Was nice to have the can because we were able to touch up spots at the bottom of the walls in the wheel wells where extra moisture may be present just in case.}

[Moon Lake Refuge]

Also... even if they paint the top, wont the first acid bath before the galvenizing just eat the paint off before they dip it?  Just curious, I dont know what all stays on but the guy that dipped ours said the acid takes up pretty much everything?

[rundrave]

do you have a estimate for total house weight? I know lots of variable to consider but do you have a ball park figure on where this build will come it at?

I would also be curious to see a cash counter on costs and how they total up as you build?

looking forward to following along with this build. Appreciate you taking the time to not only share some of your ideas but include them in detail in your posts with pics. It all takes time to put these posts together and it awesome that you are willing to put the time in effort to share it with everyone.

 

[Hawg]

Using an automatic satellite finder or a dish of some sort? 

Why not another window on each side so you can see out better from the back ? 

Edited March 18, 2016 by Hawg

[Lip_Ripper Guy]

52 minutes ago, Moon Lake Refuge said:

Also... even if they paint the top, wont the first acid bath before the galvenizing just eat the paint off before they dip it?  Just curious, I dont know what all stays on but the guy that dipped ours said the acid takes up pretty much everything?

I'm not real sure on this.  I have zero experience or knowledge on galvanizing.  We'll find out!

21 minutes ago, rundrave said:

do you have a estimate for total house weight? I know lots of variable to consider but do you have a ball park figure on where this build will come it at?

My last one was 5400#, and I'll have at least 200# saved with the aluminum floor, so I'd guess about 5200#.

17 minutes ago, Hawg said:

Using an automatic satellite finder or a dish of some sort? 

For sure not a crank up dish.  I may do an automatic satellite, or no satellite, and just have a connection for the portable automatic dish.  

Edited March 18, 2016 by Lip_Ripper Guy

[Moon Lake Refuge]

10 minutes ago, Lip_Ripper Guy said:

I'm not real sure on this.  I have zero experience or knowledge on galvanizing.  We'll find out!

 

I think it will likely eat the paint off before they dip it, or even potentially contaminate their bath.  If they cant do it that way don't worry... You can grind 4 inch strips along the top outside corner for welding.  Takes about 30-60 seconds per strip and it paints over with zinc real well.  They guy who did ours was really excited to be doing fish houses and had a lot of great advice.  Very affordable and just outside of the cities.  If you want his contact info for another opinion feel free to shoot me a message.

[Cooperman]

LRG,

are you planning on using the 5/16 tongue & groove or standard thickness? If you use the 5/16' have you sourced it and determined the cost?

Thanks

[Lip_Ripper Guy]

10 hours ago, Cooperman said:

LRG,

are you planning on using the 5/16 tongue & groove or standard thickness? If you use the 5/16' have you sourced it and determined the cost?

Thanks

Funny you should ask. Bought Menards out of their last 34 packages of 5/16" last night. $9.97/pack after $5 mail in rebate  

And stayed up til 2am staining the first 16 packages. 

The final 18 will be stained by noon tomorrow. Then they are being sent off to be sprayed with 5 coats of lacquer on Monday. 

[Cooperman]

Wow, that's a good deal. Please post a photo when you get them back finished.

[Moon Lake Refuge]

Talked to the old man this weekend and your right the paint will stay on fine for galvenizing.  Not much easier to grind off for welding though so probably just a matter of preference.  If anything like where we went we didnt hit the minimum charge for weight.  They guy said he would charge for x lbs no matter what so if we had anything else we wanted dipped to bring it out.  Not sure if there is a standard weight everywhere or if it varies.  

[Moon Lake Refuge]

With the added room in the walls is there any benefit to running any or your water lines through the wall for a quicker recovery time?  How long do you anticipate it will take to initially come up to temperature?  Also for your wiring, are you soldering any of your connections or just using crimp fittings?  We started with some crimp fittings for our trailer lights but they dont seem very solid.

[YettiStyle]

Don't forget the heated toilet seat with cup holders!  Really intrigued by your in-floor heating idea. 

[Lip_Ripper Guy]

1 hour ago, Moon Lake Refuge said:

With the added room in the walls is there any benefit to running any or your water lines through the wall for a quicker recovery time?  How long do you anticipate it will take to initially come up to temperature?  Also for your wiring, are you soldering any of your connections or just using crimp fittings?  We started with some crimp fittings for our trailer lights but they dont seem very solid.

I'm really not sure how long it'll take to bring the house up to temp, but it takes about 20-30 mins to get the water heater up to temp.  There will for sure be some settings to work out.  The default temp on the water heater is 130 degrees, and I got an adjustable thermostat that will take it all the way down to 90, or up to 140.  It may be that it takes a higher temp (120-140) to initially bring the house up to temp, and a lower temp (90-120) once it gets there.  Recovery rate is about 12 gallons per hour on LP only, or 18 gallons per hour with LP/electric combo.  

All my connections get 3M heat shrink butt connectors, and the critical ones get an extra layer of adhesive lined heat shrink tubing over the top.  You'll break the wires before the connection fails, and so far (knock on wood), I've never had one come loose.

If your crimps don't seem good, you'll probably want to invest in a better crimper.  You can spend a truck load of money on some of them.  I use a Sea Dog 4299201.  It makes a nice wide crimp to hold a greater surface area of wire.  About $40.        

[Moon Lake Refuge]

2 minutes ago, Lip_Ripper Guy said:

If your crimps don't seem good, you'll probably want to invest in a better crimper.  You can spend a truck load of money on some of them.  I use a Sea Dog 4299201.  It makes a nice wide crimp to hold a greater surface area of wire.  About $40.        

Good to know, yeah I was using my dads crimper witch was a pain in the butt.  Mine is slightly better but still not something special.  May look into something a little more substantial to make sure it gets done right.  Thanks for the info!

[rustysetter]

LRG, your project is impressive, very good quality, I'll be interested to see how the heating system works out. It will be fun to follow this. Thanks for sharing all of your information.

[Lip_Ripper Guy]

I'm extremely happy with where I'm at on this build.  Great progress was made in the last two days.  As I posted above, the interior wood is all stained, just needs another quick sanding, and then one last coat of lacquer Monday evening.  It is looking awesome!

Yesterday we picked up all the 1x2 tube steel for framing.  Someone at the steel company struggled to count to 65 and shorted us by 1 piece.  It *might* be okay, but I have everything calculated so there is very little waste (under 10' on the 21' house and 15' on the 24').  I'm hopeful that the steel company will realize their error, and deliver my last piece.  

Today was spent getting all the roof and wall studs cut.  It went extremely well, taking only 2 hours to cut everything, which included a good 1/2 hour of farting around getting jigs setup.  

(71) full length wall studs, and (34) roof studs.  This is about as far as we can go without having the actual frames to make some of the more critical (exact) cuts.  I'm thinking there's another 3-4 hours of cutting.  There's a lot of smaller pieces, and quite a few that are going to have to be absolutely perfect with the angles up in the V.  

I'm hoping to pick up the frames by the end of the week, and finish cutting Friday evening.  That means we can get everything welded up on Saturday, and potentially be installing siding and windows on Sunday.  That's best case scenario, which usually doesn't happen!           

[Lip_Ripper Guy]

The wood is all finished up.  What was originally going to be 5 coats of lacquer, got turned into two.  We could have kept going, but it would have been way overkill.  I've never used lacquer before, but it creates a rock hard finish that will be incredibly durable.  Spraying it is the way to go...3 1/2 hours for everything.  

This finish is a 50/50 mix of dark walnut and natural stain and is the exact look I was going for.  It isn't terribly dark, but is a really great rustic look.  The boards with the reddish hue will be culled and used in the bathroom.  This picture shows only about 10% of the total boards!    

The cabinet frames, trim work, and ceiling will be 100% dark walnut stain for a modern/rustic/two tone look.  There will also be some high gloss galvanized accents, so I guess you could call it a three-tone-look.  

The siding got ordered today and should be in early next week.  The 21' house is going to be "berkshire blue" and the 24' house will be "charcoal".  Also, just to add to this summer's fun, we'll be building a 4x6 spear house that will also be "berkshire blue".  My other posts have talked about the importance of getting bids/prices from multiple sources.  With (42) pieces of aluminum sheets total, I had a variation of over $1,500 from high to low.    

    

The frames will be done on Friday, so the real fun starts Saturday morning.  Stay tuned!

Edited March 29, 2016 by Lip_Ripper Guy

[landscaper]

Great news! Great Info! Great Pictures!

Your new house will be the  21'  "berkshire blue" ? I do like both siding colors.

I really LOVE the interior stain color and how that turned out!!! Very Nice! Plan on doing a rustic look very similar to that in my house-house.

Cant wait to see the spear house.  On wheels or skids? Sounds like another fun project!

[Lip_Ripper Guy]

19 minutes ago, landscaper said:

Great news! Great Info! Great Pictures!

Your new house will be the  21'  "berkshire blue" ? I do like both siding colors.

I really LOVE the interior stain color and how that turned out!!! Very Nice! Plan on doing a rustic look very similar to that in my house-house.

Cant wait to see the spear house.  On wheels or skids? Sounds like another fun project!

Yes, my house will be the 21' berkshire blue.  It looks purple in the picture of the sample I took, but definitely is not.  

The spear house will be on skids, and will be very lightweight, designed to replace a portable fish house.  I'm working out the details right now, but it will be the same tube steel structure, aluminum siding, and rubber roof.  We weren't planning on building it until yesterday after we got to looking at all the spare parts sitting around from the previous builds.  Very much a "bring your own chair" type house, which are actually my favorite types of fish houses.    

[thefarmer]

Any frame specs on the spear house? And a guess on what your finished weight will be?

[1lessdog]

I was looking at the 5/16 knotty ceder. Yes ceder from Menards.  I was looking at putting it in my house then spraying in with sealent. Do you think I need to seal both sides? It look like the same stuf you are using Lip Ripper.