When I visit my brother in Seattle, I am always curious about the houseboats that line sections of the northwest city’s waterways.  While these kinds of communities might be common in Seattle or Florida, the only place that I have seen a floating neighborhood on Lake Erie is at Erie, PA’s Presque Isle Park.

But that might change if a report in the Toledo Blade comes to fruition.  Port Clinton is considering whether to allow a gated houseboat community.  Excerpt and link:

Mr. Vandergiessen said they are equipped with city water and sewer lines as well as an electric utility system.

They are tethered to the lake bed by several dense, metal poles that are anchored about 25 feet in the ground, and as the water rises and falls, so do the houses.

But when standing in one of the homes it is hard to tell that it is floating.

“On an extreme day with high winds, you’ll feel it tug a little bit,” said Ron Wolf, sales manager for Coastal Marine II and Coastal Floating Homes. “On a day like today [Friday], you can see the water moving a little bit, but we don’t have wave action out here and it’s just like standing on the black top.”

Mr. Wolf said the homes aren’t affected by floods because they float and are tethered to the lake bed.

They also are equipped with a “bubbler system,” for winter months to keep the water under and around the houses from freezing when the rest of the lake does.

“It circulates the warmer water under the home and around the home,” Mr. Wolf said. “You’ll still see surface ice around the edges of the home, but what we’re trying to prevent is getting the hard ice, the thick ice to freeze … although it won’t hurt the foundation.”

Full story:

http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080929/NEWS17/809290323/-1/RSS08

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