2017 Fish House Build

[Hawg]

Just talked to Catch Cover to see if they had any of the old ones around. I was told that the old ones were different plastic, ABS I think, and the new ones are actually stronger. Go figure. These do what I need, and do it well, but I do wish they stayed in place a little better.  

Edited December 8, 2016 by Hawg

[Lip_Ripper Guy]

34 minutes ago, Hawg said:

Just talked to Catch Cover to see if they had any of the old ones around. I was told that the old ones were different plastic, ABS I think, and the new ones are actually stronger. Go figure. These do what I need, and do it well, but I do wish they stayed in place a little better.  

 

I was really surprised at how strong these new ones are.  There is very little flex.  I went to the show wanting the Katz covers, but they flex 10x's more.  Not to the point that they would break, but it is something I don't care for.  

[ANYFISH2]

Lip Ripper, love watching your builds.

One question/critique is how many times is a guy going catch the corner of those runners for the top bunk?

That looks like something I would be cussing at quite often.

 

[Lip_Ripper Guy]

45 minutes ago, ANYFISH2 said:

Lip Ripper, love watching your builds.

One question/critique is how many times is a guy going catch the corner of those runners for the top bunk?

That looks like something I would be cussing at quite often.

 

Haha...I don't think it'll be a problem, but I can definitely see why it looks like it could be.  The runners stick out 1.5" from the wall, and the cushions stick out 4".  Time will tell.  It could be one of those things that ends up a giant headache, but its similar to the Happi Jac, and I've not seen any complaints about those (in that area).  

[AlwaysFishing23]

15 hours ago, Lip_Ripper Guy said:

Some other small detail items before I get to the finished pics of the entire house.

 

Each bench has a built in UV jig glow light.  You never have to worry about finding your keychain light (or the dead battery they always seem to have) again!

 

The normal bench cushion back always seems to be falling down.   I had each cushion sewn with a tab, and then installed a grommet and a hook on the wall.  

 

 

On the back side of each wheel well is a rod storage compartment for 4 rods, an ice scoop, a forceps, and a few small hooks for miscellaneous stuff.

 

I mentioned the under cabinet and under bunk lighting in another post, but here it is in action.

 

And another view of my charging cabinet, with rattle reel storage.

 

That's all for now.  Finished pics soon!

 

That little charging station is really cool. Great idea.

Edited December 8, 2016 by Fishin machine

[Papa Bear]

Very nice work again LRG! Like many others, I have gotten a lot of good information from your postings on here and greatly appreciate it! I am in the process of building a 22' house now myself and know the extra time and effort it takes to document progress. I plan to share some of my experiences when I'm closer to finished. Once again thank you very much for sharing and great work!

[Datman7890]

Have you gotten curious and fired up the in floor heat to see if it will hold temp in there? 

 

 

 

 

[Lip_Ripper Guy]

On 12/18/2016 at 9:05 PM, Datman7890 said:

Have you gotten curious and fired up the in floor heat to see if it will hold temp in there? 

 

 

 

 

It's been run a lot over the last month, but the maiden voyage was up to Red this last Sunday til today. From -30 to +30, the forced air furnace never kicked on. The only thing I didn't do was try to use the in floor for the initial warm up. I was interested in getting as far away from -30 as quickly as possible. 

[Chaws]

Good to hear it was successful. Remind me, is the heating for that electric or is that propane in the hot water heater? I'd be curious as to the amount of propane used. Also, when you picked up the house after sitting at least overnight, was the frame ever warmed enough to make imprints from melting the ice under it? Thinking thermal transfer into the flooring and frame.

[Moon Lake Refuge]

11 hours ago, Lip_Ripper Guy said:

It's been run a lot over the last month, but the maiden voyage was up to Red this last Sunday til today. From -30 to +30, the forced air furnace never kicked on. The only thing I didn't do was try to use the in floor for the initial warm up. I was interested in getting as far away from -30 as quickly as possible. 

You seeing much difference in humidity levels + or - going in floor over forced air?

[Lip_Ripper Guy]

4 hours ago, Chaws said:

Good to hear it was successful. Remind me, is the heating for that electric or is that propane in the hot water heater? I'd be curious as to the amount of propane used. Also, when you picked up the house after sitting at least overnight, was the frame ever warmed enough to make imprints from melting the ice under it? Thinking thermal transfer into the flooring and frame.

It is both electric & propane.  

 

There will be no downward thermal transfer.  There is plywood over the frame, a 3/4" layer of high density board foam, the PEX is run through a 2nd layer of high density 3/4" board foam, with heat transfer plates surrounding the pex pipes, and then aluminum sheeting over everything.  The entire underside is spray foamed, over all the metal framing (other than the perimeter framing).

 

From Sunday morning until Wednesday morning I used roughly 20# of propane, which included about 2 hours of forced air + water heater from the landing until being fully set up.    

4 hours ago, Moon Lake Refuge said:

You seeing much difference in humidity levels + or - going in floor over forced air?

Not that I can tell.  I'll watch the monitor.  Usually I run the range vent for 10-15 mins a few times per day, just to get some of the stale air out.  In this house the bath fan is like a mini wind turbine, sucking all the air out, so the range vent may be unnecessary.  

[Moon Lake Refuge]

47 minutes ago, Lip_Ripper Guy said:

Not that I can tell.  I'll watch the monitor.  Usually I run the range vent for 10-15 mins a few times per day, just to get some of the stale air out.  In this house the bath fan is like a mini wind turbine, sucking all the air out, so the range vent may be unnecessary.  

What did you end up using for the bath fan?  I've found out the hard way after a few beers that after sprayfoaming a house those suckers are air tight and nothing escapes, not even smells.

[Lip_Ripper Guy]

3 hours ago, Moon Lake Refuge said:

What did you end up using for the bath fan?  I've found out the hard way after a few beers that after sprayfoaming a house those suckers are air tight and nothing escapes, not even smells.

 

MaxxAir MaxxFan 7000K.  I put one in the main part of the house, and one in the bathroom.  The one in the main part of the house has an insulated cover for the winter to eliminate heat loss and condensation.    

[Lip_Ripper Guy]

Thought I'd give a little (long) update after making the maiden voyage this weekend.  The first trip every year is a bit of a learning experience, but you get things figured out pretty quickly and hope to be a little more efficient and get the kinks ironed out.  

 

-Got everything loaded up and checked and re-checked Saturday night.  Temps weren't bad (maybe 10), but you could tell they were dropping quickly.  I kept the heat on overnight to keep the water and beer from freezing.  Didn't sleep worth a darn.  

 

-My day started with a 2am run up to the airport, which was supposed to have the house in tow and then directly to Red Lake, but my cousin and (also very experienced-this is important later) fishing partner's alarm clock didn't go off so I got to come back and re-start the trip at 5am.  It happens. 

-Temp ranged from -25 to -30 the majority of the drive up on Sunday morning.  

-Quick stop to grab the 4 wheeler from the cabin near Motley, and we were on to leg #2 of the journey.  Two gas station diesel pumps were frozen in Motley, and a third had just got theirs flowing.  Note to self: double the additive.  

-We hit JRs around noon.  Heat got turned on in the house in Kelliher.  My hope was that we had made enough ice that we could drive the truck out, but no such luck.  After changing into heavy clothes, unloading and hitching up the Honda, and we were on our way.  Kind of...

-The hydraulic pump was doing nothing but clicking.  This has gone up and down HUNDREDS of times and the battery spent it's life at 95%+ charge without a hiccup.  We switched the cables over to the house batteries, and it went up and down without any issue.  Must be a bad battery that took some serious temps to show up.  This is why you isolate the hydraulic battery from the house batteries.         

-On our way, without the snowmobile helmet that was on my list.  -20 is hard on the face.  The Honda 450 rocks on this house.  Pretty surprising, actually.  

 

-It probably took about an hour to get our first fish, and I was sure happy to have scored first.  About a 15" walleye.  Fishing partner says he was being nice and fishing without bait out of respect.  Richard.  Red Kastmaster and a minnow head.  

-Had our limit about 8pm, but very slow fishing.  Almost everything on rattle reels.  Pulled up the lines to focus on beer drinking.  It worked.  Slept good.

-Monday morning brought the mother of all headaches.  No ibuprofen, also was on the list.  

-About an hour later we got a call from a friend about a mile from us, who was 50' away from a 2' wide crack that had just happened.  Said there was some serious water showing up, and a house right next to him that had the crack go right under it.  We decided to bundle up, and go check it out.

-Not good...

-I had never seen anything quite like this, but I've heard some stories of similar, so I had a pretty good idea what we needed to do.  The 3 guys in the house were remarkably calm.  They were going to head in to the access to see what could be done, but I could tell we were all quite worried the house was going to be under way before they got back, as the main crack had spread about 3-4" in the first 5 mins we were there.  This is where I was very happy to have my cousin with, as we were able to kind of chat about a game plan based upon a couple other stories we had both heard about this situation.  Our main worry was that just behind the tire in this pic, there is a crack that continues all the way up to the main crack everyone tends to focus on. This chunk ran to about 6" short of the back corner on the other side, so I honestly wasn't very worried about the main crack.  If this let loose the house was going for a swim.  

-Check out the banking and how far the house shifted!

-We all talked about a couple options, but we were short on equipment.  I had a 4" wide tow strap and tire chains in my truck at the landing, but that was going to be an hour round trip.  My buddy had an old frayed 2" wide tow strap and a couple tow ropes that were going to have to work.  My only advice for the owner (driver) was that this wasn't like towing a water skier (where you want to be smooth)...lots of slack in the rope, and balls to the walls because we had one chance...

IMG_5113.mov

-It worked about as well as everyone could have hoped for with only about 20' of rope, and a 5500# truck trying to pull a 4500# fish house on its frame.

-With hindsight being 20/20, there's a couple things we could have done differently.  We could have strapped the wheels up.  It wasn't really a consideration, as things were moving so quickly with the crack and water around it that we just needed to get it out of there.  And honestly, we didn't have the equipment to do it.  I would have done the exact same thing with my own house.     

-In the next few hours, 3 trucks, a wheel house, and a tracked side by side all went into that crack (that we know of), which was a couple miles long.

-Again, with hindsight being 20/20, a good lesson for wheel house owners: have a good tow strap, and a set of tire chains with you at all times.  There's absolutely nothing you can do to control mother nature and the ice cracks.  The ice was about 15" thick, and the only blame for this situation is mother nature, and a temperature that went from -30 to +30 in about 24 hours.  The ice is going to expand big time when this happens, especially on a huge lake like Red.

 

-So after this "situation" our entire trip went great!  The warm weather brought some really great fishing, and we got to help a youngster build a passion for the outdoors.  Lots of snacks, movies, and minnow counting were the name of the game, and the Superman pole was on fire for the next two days!

      

 

The fish fry out of JRs is my favorite.  

 

-We limited out on Monday and Tuesday, with the night bite from 12-4 being by far the best.  I'd say roughly 25 fish per day was the count.  Wednesday we headed home without any adventures of note!  Time to tidy up a couple things, and get ready for the next trip!

Edited December 23, 2016 by Lip_Ripper Guy

[btupy]

You don't use a dolly to tow your house with the wheeler?

[Lip_Ripper Guy]

10 hours ago, btupy said:

You don't use a dolly to tow your house with the wheeler?

Not needed with the Honda. 

[leech~~]

Wow, it looks like leaving the wheels up and pulling the house on the frame was the best idea on the crack video.

 

[Hawg]

I'm not sure I would have thought of that, leaving the wheels up, but that's the only way to snatch it when you think about it. This has never happened to me, thanks for the lesson. I would definitely need a change of underwear.  I had one side of the house melt away from reflected sun on early ice but it was years ago with a skid house. We tied 4  4 wheelers together and blasted it. Scary as hell. 

[Lip_Ripper Guy]

A 2nd update on propane usage with the in floor heat.  3.9 gallons from about noon Thursday , through around noon on Sunday.  It's looking like about 6 pounds of propane per full day, which is about half of what my previous 25k BTU forced air was burning.  This does include about 4-5 hours of cooking on the propane stove.  So far everything is testing great!

[perchking]

Look at all of the money you are saving:) just kidding!!! Love following your builds LRG,  u need to protect your IP on a lot of these ideas... seriously you do. 

[Lip_Ripper Guy]

4 hours ago, perchking said:

Look at all of the money you are saving:) just kidding!!! Love following your builds LRG,  u need to protect your IP on a lot of these ideas... seriously you do. 

 

The nitty gritty is kept on the DL, kinda   

 

Version 2.0 of the in floor heat is designed and ready to go, and I have a volunteer who I'll be installing it in their Firebrand soon.  Version 1.0 (soon to be 1.1) is going to get a couple tweaks next week that will cut energy usage by at least another 25%.

 

One other thing I forgot about is that the battery usage is way down in comparison to forced air.  Running all my interior and exterior lights, the hydronic pump, and stereo, I used about 20 amp hours per 24 hour period.  That should yield a solid 8-10 days without plugging into a generator or shore power to recharge batteries.  

 

I also ordered some insulated wheel skirts a few weeks back that shipped out today.  Hopefully I'll have them for the weekend.  The lake I fished last weekend had zero snow for banking to go with the 30mph wind that seemed to cut right under the house and hole sleeves.    

 

 

[Papa Bear]

Since you're on to newer versions of the in floor heat have you looked into the tankless any more? You mentioned that residential style tankless venting was an issue. How so? I purchased an Aquah brand tankless direct vent for hot water in mine. These are typically installed in homes but when I contacted the dealer I was told they have installed these in RVs and sold to dealers. They have either 2.65 GPM or 3.7 GPM at 45 deg temp rise models.

[Lip_Ripper Guy]

49 minutes ago, Papa Bear said:

Since you're on to newer versions of the in floor heat have you looked into the tankless any more? You mentioned that residential style tankless venting was an issue. How so? I purchased an Aquah brand tankless direct vent for hot water in mine. These are typically installed in homes but when I contacted the dealer I was told they have installed these in RVs and sold to dealers. They have either 2.65 GPM or 3.7 GPM at 45 deg temp rise models.

 

The Aquah systems are designed specifically for RV use, as far as I know.  I looked at the 400LP model initially.  I was referring to the Eccotemp, Marey, Vevor, etc that are designed for use in a residential home.  Those have specific vent length, diameter, and capping requirements that would be problematic in a RV/fish house setting.

[Datman7890]

I'm surprised that the fuel usage would be so much lower. Wonder if this shack is just insulated that much better? Very cool to hear it works just fine though. 

 

Shack came out really nice. Been nothing but motivation to go this route myself and just build vs buy. 

[Lip_Ripper Guy]

2 hours ago, Datman7890 said:

I'm surprised that the fuel usage would be so much lower. Wonder if this shack is just insulated that much better? Very cool to hear it works just fine though. 

 

Shack came out really nice. Been nothing but motivation to go this route myself and just build vs buy. 

 

I think the difference is that it is a 12k BTU burner doing the heating, vs 25k or 30k.  Insulation is pretty similar, and I have 1 extra window.    

 

It's looking like -25 is about the low temp at which the in floor heat can be the sole heat source (as designed).  Last weekend was -31 and the furnace (which I set 3 degrees below the in floor temp) kicked on about every 2 hours for maybe 5 minutes.  It never ran once the temp got up to -20 or warmer.

 

Some people think I'm crazy, but I'd spend more money to build my own shack to have it exactly how I want it.  Plus, the quality is better than anything out there.  There is enough info on all the build posts on this site for people to work through a build.  It isn't hard, but I will warn you that it takes WAY more time than you'd think.  Plan for 500 hours for actual building on your first build, and another 500 hours of designing, tracking down, picking up, and ordering materials, and you might be close