http://www.instructables.com/id/Incredible-Soda-Bottle-Pontoon-Boat/

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Incredible Soda Bottle Pontoon Boatby deceiver on July 22, 2006

Table of Contents

Incredible Soda Bottle Pontoon Boat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Intro:   Incredible Soda Bottle Pontoon Boat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Step 1:   Framing it up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Step 2:   Floatilla . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Step 3:   Finish work and the seat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Step 4:   Propulsion and electrical . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Step 5:   Figure head . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Step 6:   A few conveniences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Step 7:   Launched and doing fine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Related Instructables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

http://www.instructables.com/id/Incredible-Soda-Bottle-Pontoon-Boat/

Author:deceiver    deceiverRetired Jr. High teacher of 30 years. Always into lots of things. Now I seem to be into them more. Love woodworking, guitar, portrait painting, building things.Married to Joyce (totally wonderful experience) and the father of two daughters (equally wonderful experience).

Intro:  Incredible Soda Bottle Pontoon BoatFOURTH UPDATE: The Incredible Soda Bottle Pontoon Boat is gone, no more, nada. It's at the dump in pieces or recycled. Watch for a new build in the spring. Sleeker,lighter, svelter, cooler. Drawing on what I've learned.

THIRD UPDATE: So, the boat has as of this writing been in the water for 7 years. It's never been pulled out just beached and left outside in winter. I noticed a few piecesof plywood coming loose and the batteries are nearing end of useful life. When you deep charge/discharge marine batteries over and over they eventually lose theirability to hold a full charge.

The third picture you see below is ugly. It's the final pictures before total and complete dismantling of the Incredible Soda Bottle Pontoon Boat. In the spring I'll startagain. this one will be different. Basically sleaker, lighter, faster. and simpler. I consider the first one a prototype. I learned a lot and I found out what works and whatdoesn't. I had lots of fun and many, many pleasant hours cruising, fishing, and fielding questions from people on lake from the banking and from boats.

This is the end of the ISBPB. Tomorrow it's a date with the sledgehammer.

SECOND UPDATE: I have had problems with burning out switches with the high current. I have recently installed 4 automobile solenoids. Wired properly they act like aDPDT switch. I have one small three position toggle switch for a control now. Forward-off-reverse. I might have to replace two of them with continuous duty solenoidsthough I don't know how long the intemittent ones will hold up going long periods in forward. I'll post pictures of the set-up when I get the chance.

UPDATE PARAGRAPH: Below is the barge, as it's called now, 4 years later. The one without the canopy is the original launched picture. The canopy is a ratherexpensive but impervious to weather material called 'sunbrulla'. The pipes are galvanized 1" electrical conduit. Other changes: the seats didn't weather well so they werecovered with latex sheeting. An American flag and holder, Oh, and a new pier I welded up.

I made a soda bottle raft a few years ago. It was just 940 two liter bottles enclosed on all sides with a deck. Later on I decided to make a pontoon boat. A sort of movableraft or barge out of soda bottles and materials from Home Depot. When I'm making a boat suddenly all stores carry boat making materials. It's fun to improvise withwhat's available.

The boat is basically wood pontoons with 2400 soda bottles filling them. It's electric and has become a wonderful place to spend an afternoon to glide silently on thewater or to fish. It's big, 20' by 12' and heavy, I'd estimate about a ton. but it moves nicely even in a stiff wind, rolls with waves but doesn't overly rock, and is highlymaneuverable. It just isn't very fast but here in Maine that the way we like it. A BBQ grill, a tall Moxie, a fishing pole and you've got it made on the water on the incrediblesoda bottle pontoon boat (alias the Pahty bahge). You need to pronounce that with a Maine accent,no R's allowed.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Incredible-Soda-Bottle-Pontoon-Boat/

Step 1: Framing it upMaterials are mostly from Home Depot. Pressure treated lumber is used for the skeleton. and yes, most of it is the non toxic kind. I don't know if it will stand up in thewater as well as the old stuff used to though.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Incredible-Soda-Bottle-Pontoon-Boat/

Step 2: FloatillaAbout 2400 soda bottles in two wood pontoons float this beast. I tried to do some buoyancy calculations by estimating final mass and volume. And I predicted that itwould float about 50 percent of the boat below the surface. I was right.

Step 3: Finish work and the seatI knew I couldn't make it look like a new pontoon boat with that plastic and cushy look so I went instead for the Jules Verne look.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Incredible-Soda-Bottle-Pontoon-Boat/

Step 4: Propulsion and electricalSee the picture descriptions for more information. The boat runs (slowly, about 5 mph) using Four modified trolling motors made by Minn Kota.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Incredible-Soda-Bottle-Pontoon-Boat/

Step 5: Figure headA carved dragon's head turns in the direction you're steering. It also has two LED lights for Eyes, one green and one red as required for night riding.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Incredible-Soda-Bottle-Pontoon-Boat/

Step 6: A few conveniencesJoyce is my wife BTW. And a ladder is needed after a cool swim and of course an anchor so you can swim and not get stranded.

Step 7: Launched and doing fineWe launched it at night as to not draw too much attention at the boat landing. Evening rides are nice and serene. No noise besides the gentle rippling of the water that ispushed aside by the boat as it glides along. And, it's great for fishing too.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Incredible-Soda-Bottle-Pontoon-Boat/

Related Instructables

Project rRaft -Building a Raftout of WaterBottles byWeissensteinburg

How to build aBoat made ofTrash &Recyclables! byjrobinson

Easy Raft byelmoenemy7

Artificial FishHabitat bylarrynvi

Go Rafting (onthe cheap!) byokayknockout

mini ship in amini bottle byAcastus

Comments

50 comments Add Comment view all 266 comments

 Jcoglobal says:  Feb 10, 2011. 6:48 PM  REPLYHow did you control the on and off of the motors?

 deceiver says:  Feb 11, 2011. 2:10 AM  REPLYThe current is high with marine batteries. regular switches burn out eventually. Do one of two things. Keep or modify the switches in the electric motorhandles. The other way is to use Continuous duty solenoids. You flip a switch, any kind will do and it flips the solenoid which is high current and made forsuch applications. They're usually used in marine applications and automobiles. Do a search for continuous duty solenoid and you'll see some. If you getfour of them you can actually cross wire them to get the polarity reversed to make the motors go backwards. Don't forget to put a 30 amp or betterautomobile fuse at the positive terminal of each battery. Nothing worse than a flaming houseboat!

 Jcoglobal says:  Feb 10, 2011. 1:31 PM  REPLYHello, I was just wondering what you used to waterproof the wood from rotting, how did you set up the motors to be controlled away from the head of themotor, and lastly what else did you modify on the motors?Thanks!

 deceiver says:  Feb 10, 2011. 4:53 PM  REPLYPressure treated lumber. Lasts years in water.

One of the motors was under the head, the other in the rear. connected two extensions coming out each side of the vertical motor pipe. Then I connectedthe front to the back motors with stainless cable. If you cross them when you turn the rear motor to the left the front one turns to the right so each end ofthe boat turns in the right direction. If that didn't make much sense, Think of the old downhill buggies we used to make with carriage wheels. we hookedtwo ropes on the front to pull the wheels left or right. This is the same principle except that the rope connects the front and back motors (The other twomotors are stationary)

Modifications of motors? I cut the shaft off and hardwired them so they are either on or off. the original heads had 5 speeds. The speed isn't that greatwith all 4 wide open but you can control the speed by turning on any combination of the 1 to 4 motors.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Incredible-Soda-Bottle-Pontoon-Boat/

 Jcoglobal says:  Feb 10, 2011. 6:46 PM  REPLYThank you very much, I am going to build a small house boat with a cabin for pleasure cruising and am searching around for the best ways to createpontoons, trying to decide between enclosing and fiberglassing them or a way like yours.P.S. What was the white sheeting that you put above the waterline on the sides of the pontoons?Sincerely,Freezing in negative degree Minnesota weather

 deceiver says:  Feb 11, 2011. 2:05 AM  REPLYYou can do both.... build an airtight pontoon... but if it should leak.. put something in it that won't let you sink.. soda bottles, or foam or whatever.

 christopherkellyfurniture says:  Jan 3, 2011. 2:25 PM  REPLYI love it.How long did it take in total and what is the total cost?

 deceiver says:  Jan 3, 2011. 4:06 PM  REPLYabout 4 months and $2000. thanks.

 christopherkellyfurniture says:  Jan 5, 2011. 3:29 PM  REPLYBrilliant,I am hoping to build something similar here in the UK.Pontoon boats are not so good here as the canals are small and the bridges are low.A narrow boat is a typical 1600mm (5 feet) air draught.I am working on a topside that can go up and down to accommodate this.

 deceiver says:  Jan 6, 2011. 3:46 AM  REPLYCool. One thing about building a boat is that you can make it fit your needs as long as you stay within the laws of physics.

 Kiernan says:  Dec 4, 2010. 5:24 PM  REPLYThat is a beautiful dragons head

 deceiver says:  Dec 5, 2010. 3:55 AM  REPLYthanks

 Silence says:  Jun 7, 2010. 6:27 PM  REPLYI wonder if you could get away with a few rows of those 55 gallon plastic drums. If you strap em to your new frame and weld up a cone to fit for each row,you would have a damn good pontoon with low resistance to movement in the water.

 deceiver says:  Jun 8, 2010. 3:09 AM  REPLYI can tell you from past experience that you can float almost anything with drums like that. We had a steel raft with a heavy plywood top. The raft wasabout 12x12 feet and very heavy. It took 4 men to successfully move one of it's three sections. Two rows of three barrels (6 in all) floated it very high inthe water. The barrels on their sides were at least 60% out of the water.

 zer6 says:  Jun 11, 2010. 1:33 PM  REPLYis there ever any problem with the barrels leaking?

 deceiver says:  Jun 13, 2010. 5:50 PM  REPLYYes, water seemed to seep into them over the summ months.. but very little. I'm not sure about the plastic ones available these days.

 Silence says:  Jun 13, 2010. 4:24 PM  REPLYThose barrels are made to hold liquids.. As such are pretty well sealed. I think the tops are fused to the rims making the only potential weak pointthe cap.

 nunja business says:  May 10, 2010. 10:15 PM  REPLYUmmm ... I hate to sound dumb but, aren't the bottles completely enclosed inside the hulls and never coming into direct contact with the water?

If so, the only purpose the bottles serve is if you sprung a leak. If the hulls are sealed up and watertight, aren't THEY providing all the bouyancy?

http://www.instructables.com/id/Incredible-Soda-Bottle-Pontoon-Boat/

 deceiver says:  May 10, 2010. 11:54 PM  REPLY Actually if you look at the picture of the back of the boat you can see that the pontoons merely contain the bottles. They are open to the watercompletely. The point was that it is an expense and difficult to built and seal pontoons. The bottles solved that problem.

 nunja business says:  May 11, 2010. 4:12 AM  REPLYGotcha! I thought the pics were while it was being dismantled and I assumed that was partially broken down.

 pplthot says:  Jan 4, 2010. 2:16 PM  REPLYCould you use any plastic container such as trash cans, cat litter containers (the ones people buy it in), rubbermaid containers or the gallon jugs they have inoffices? Does it have to be a certain kind of plastic to last in ocean water? For any containers that don't have water tight lids you could seal the lids on withsome marine adhesive.

 deceiver says:  Jan 4, 2010. 3:46 PM  REPLY No problem with the type of container at all. As long as it seals.

 pplthot says:  Jan 4, 2010. 5:10 PM  REPLYThen all I need to figure out now is how much air I need to keep my boat up. I'm planning on building a simple houseboat using this method. I wouldrather use the 55 gallon barrels but the cheapest I could find them for in my area was $20 a barrel and I'm doing this on a extremely tight budget.

 -chase- says:  Apr 14, 2010. 8:17 AM  REPLYI've looked a many a design - using pontoons, 55gal drums, fabricated dock floats and Styro Blanks as well as barge style base for a possiblevessel.

There are some older books on Houseboat building that goes into the 55gal drum and stryo blank design that seem quite stable, stiff and strongenough to handle intercoastal water ways.

Costs of the drums depending on area of course - it seems easy enough to replace one if one starts taking on water.

I have not made my desicion yet as to which design style i'm going with - still looking into it and costs involved.

Biggest problem i have with my current location is - "where to build it... " affordably that is. Tough to come by space large enough cheap enoughin the city. lol

 deceiver says:  Apr 14, 2010. 9:42 AM  REPLY Two ideas I've toyed with. One was to cap the ends of 6-8" PVC. Bind them together with some sort of pipe frame or straps that could beattached to a platform.

The other was to take a couple of large lolly tubes. The stiff, thickwalled ones they use for columns to pour cement in. They come from 8" toabout 24" in diameter. Then buy the thick pink Styrofoam sheeting and make a rig to cut circles out that would fit in the tube. and stack themup like lifesavers inside. Finally I'd get some fiberglass cloth and do the outside of the tubes. A lot of work but I'll bet it would be nice.

 -chase- says:  Apr 15, 2010. 3:33 PM  REPLYI agree the lolly tubes would be a good one - i looked into these myself for use as a mold for glassing them in... i like the styfo donut addidea though... hmmmm...

I'd have to do a calc of the weight add and displacement with the donuts added in.

I also looked into polystyrene water tanks. - which could easily be spin welded to seal and to fix as a repair. - we have a second handlocation for these where i'm at and they go for pretty resonable prices.

I did see someone actually made a house boat out of a single huge one. I liked it kinda - but would hve added two smaller ones to act aspontoons - some fear i had in jsut looking at it of it rolling over int he night - or some manatee or dolfins playing with it thining it was a water toy and rolling it put me off to the single water tank idea. lol

I'm still looking at many variations - some i'm finding are way out there but work - so... what ever floats your boat as they say seems towork.

I did see the guy that built an island with a shelter on it out of bottles - pretty cool - sand plants and all - i understood the country he was in- confiscated it claiming it was part of the country when he tried to move it to a different location out of the country ... ? But it was neat -and they showed how he would add to it or fix an area using bottles he found - it was on tv.

i like the lines of your vessel - looks good!

 TheIrishApe says:  Apr 4, 2010. 6:24 PM  REPLYYou should make an instructable, i would defiantly love to make a house boat out of 55 gallon barrels, or if you have some kind of blueprintscould you email me. TheIrishApe@yahoo.com. I would appreciate your help. Trying to find a summer project.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Incredible-Soda-Bottle-Pontoon-Boat/

 pplthot says:  Apr 5, 2010. 12:02 PM  REPLYI never went through with the plan because this kind of boat can't stay together in the ocean. You can do it on a lake though.

 deceiver says:  Apr 5, 2010. 4:27 AM  REPLYWell, the boat was just a lot of head planning and then building by the seat of my pants. sorry, I never had any documentation at all. Oftenwhen I build something it's like a road trip. It's fun to just think about it and see where it takes you. This was that kind of project.

 Ranie-K says:  Jan 10, 2010. 6:38 AM  REPLYI've heard about fighter jet's drop tanks. These are supposed to be sold as scrap aluminium when the airplane type they're made for is scrapped.These should be super flotation devices. Anyone know where to get these?

 deceiver says:  Jan 4, 2010. 6:28 PM  REPLY Forget each bottle. Look at the volume of space all your bottles will take up. for instance if your bottles take up a volume of 2'x2'x10' then you'llhave a volume of airspace about 40 square feet.

It needs to be done in metric and then converted to the standard (american system) but I can help you out here. 1 square foot of air space willfloat about 60 pounds of weight. so a pontoon that is about 40 square feet like the example above will float about 40 sq ft x 60 pounds = 2400pounds. Now, that's floating at water level. If you want the boat of that weight to be 50% out of the water then you'd need about twice that volumeof pontoon.

If you made two pontoons 3ft x 2ft x 20 ft that would be 120 sq ft.  Multiply that time 60 and you'd get 7200 pounds of floating. Two pontoonswould lift roughly 14,000 lbs to water level. To have the pontoons half out of the water the boat and it's contents would have to be around 7000lbs or less.

 pplthot says:  Jan 5, 2010. 6:48 AM  REPLYI was actually just going to have a single square hull. I figure this would simplify the building process. I also figured if I'm putting a cabin withfurniture on this boat I might need the extra space for more air.

I'll be measuring each container I put into the hull for accuracy. If I were using bottles I wouldn't, but since I'll be using much fewer containersit shouldn't be too much trouble. Water is 8.35 pounds per gallon, so a 35 gallon bin would support about 290 pounds? Is this correct?

Couldn't you stuff the hull with too much air, then hangs weights off the sides, or the bottom of the boat to bring the hull down to 50%? Thereason for doing it that way would be so I have the option of adding and taking away cargo without having to add more air to the hull. Like atsome point I'd add a couch, or a wood stove and other heavy objects. I'd just remove some of the weights each time I add another item.

 deceiver says:  Jan 5, 2010. 11:28 AM  REPLY Sound about right for 35 gallons. Why weight it down? just let it float higher.

 pplthot says:  Jan 5, 2010. 6:34 PM  REPLYI read somewhere (might have been a comment on here) about how having too much buoyancy might cause the boat to bob like acork. I'm not imagining it flipping over but I don't want it floating so high that it might compromise the stability of the boat. I'm obviouslyno naval expert so I'm just thinking of any possible problems.

 deceiver says:  Jan 6, 2010. 7:01 AM  REPLY You are right there. I have a raft made of the same way as the boat. it's 8x8 ft and about 2 ft high. The kids love it because whenthe boats make waves it sways a foot and a half up and down on either side.My boat is 50% out of the water but it has such mass that even a large boat wake barely moves it. It's not easy to get that amountof mass moving. Then the waves are gone and it's over.

 pplthot says:  Jan 6, 2010. 9:52 AM  REPLYMy hull is only about about 25% of the height of the boat. How much support would I need if I wanted my waterline to be at25% of the height of the boat?

Here is my design if it helps:

http://i71.photobucket.com/albums/i145/peoplethought/boatweight.jpg

 deceiver says:  Jan 6, 2010. 1:00 PM  REPLY Cool design. It really isn't the height. It's the mass and surface area on the water. So, you surface area is as big as thearea of the house. If it's well floated it should be ok. But the more mass you add to it the lower it will float in the water.There is a direct relationship I have described way above in the replies long ago

Density = mass / volume. It only works in metrics.   1 cubic centimeter has a mass of 1 gram. or a density of 1 gram/cmcubed. Any object less than 1 will float and any object more than one will sink.

So, if you had a boat that was 1000 cubic cm. and had a mass of 500grams it's density would be   D = 500grams/1000cubic cm. or 0.5 g/cubic cm. 50% of that boat would be out of the water. A rock weighs more than it's volume. so it sinks.

A boat with a mass/volume relationship of 1000 to 1000 would have a density of 1. It wouldn't sink or float.. sort of hover atwater level.

A boat with a mass/volume relationshop of 1000 to 500 would have a density of 1.5 and sink.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Incredible-Soda-Bottle-Pontoon-Boat/

These relationships are the beauty of the metric system and why it's used exclusively in the sciences.

Try and estimate how much the boat will weigh (in grams) and the volume of the pontoon part in cubic cm. and see if yourdensity is greater or less than 1.

 pplthot says:  Jan 6, 2010. 1:47 PM  REPLYSo I have 32 air tight bins in my design. Each one is roughly 5.625 cubic feet. Convert that to 159282.262 cm³. I have32 of them, so that comes to 5097032.384 cm3 combined.

I think my original guess at the weight of the boat is too much, but for this example - If the boat weighs 6500 pounds.That is 2948350.405 g.

2948350.405 g / 5097032.384 cm3 = 0.58

That would put the waterline just above the mid point?

Double that much air and I get to about 0.28. That would put about 1/4 of the boat underwater?

Thanks for helping me with this.

 deceiver says:  Jan 6, 2010. 2:13 PM  REPLY If your calcs are right then you should be right on. I calculated mine and sure enough I could have put a chalk lineon the pontoon before I set it in the water and it would have been spot on.

Your next step is to see how much more stuff or people could be on the boat before it gets too low in the water. Ithink you'll find it's a lot.

I must say, that if you ever do make this be sure to overbuild the part below the water when it comes toconnections. Use bolts instead of screws for instance. Mine eventually lost integrity below water line when it cameto such things.

You're welcome.

 pplthot says:  Jan 6, 2010. 2:41 PM  REPLYYes I'll be using galvanized bolts. I don't think I'll have to worry too much about people or somewhat lightweightitems like my bike. I will be putting large things like couches, shelves, and mattresses into the equations.

 deceiver says:  Jan 7, 2010. 7:00 AM  REPLY You know, I don't know where you are. I know that in some southern states houseboats are allowed onsome lakes but in most other states it's not legal to have a domicile type of boat. You can't have a boat withrooms that are like a house to live in. There are even restrictions on cabins in sailboats. Here in Maine, wehave thousands of lakes. I've never seen a houseboat. So, I'm sure you're privy to the laws on this wereyou are but I just thought I'd mention it.

 pplthot says:  Jan 7, 2010. 9:10 AM  REPLYDo you know where I can find information on that? I can't find any information on the internet about it?All I've been able to find out is that if it has a means of propulsion then it is considered a vessel. If itdoesn't then it's a "floating home".

 deceiver says:  Jan 7, 2010. 9:36 AM  REPLY You might try here.Houseboat Living - what laws, rules, or regulations affect house boats?

You could also find your state online and search the site for boating laws. You might call your localor state fish and game.

 pplthot says:  Jan 7, 2010. 9:56 AM  REPLYAccording this this, as long as I use my boat for navigation, even if only occasionally, it isn'tconsidered a live aboard vessel. I guess this is why I read somewhere that if you had a meansof propulsion, it isn't a "floating home".

http://www.boatus.com/gov/GA005FLAnchoring.pdf

 deceiver says:  Jan 6, 2010. 2:11 PM  REPLY If your calcs are right then you should be right on. I calculated mine and sure enough I could have put a chalk lineon the pontoon before I set it in the water and it would have been spot on.

Your next step is to see how much more stuff or people could be on the boat before it gets too low in the water. Ithink you'll find it's a lot.

You're welcome.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Incredible-Soda-Bottle-Pontoon-Boat/

 -chase- says:  Apr 14, 2010. 8:08 AM  REPLYQuestion - Why not just go the extra few feet and seal the pontoons rather than having a cage design to hold the bottles?

Seems like a real nice design - personally after all the work you put into it - closing in the pontoons and sealing the edges with 4" fiberglass tape and sealingthe wood would have been a simpler solution. Cost more - but easier in the long run.

Unless i'm missing something in the design - this probably would help with the drag and you could pick up a knot or two as well as vessel lift.

Neat though - for sure! thanks for sharing

 deceiver says:  Apr 14, 2010. 9:37 AM  REPLY Sealed in, they leak eventually. Especially wood. And I wanted to have a Soda Bottle boat. That's why the back was left open with pipes to cage them in.When I'd go around the lake people would ask.. and I'd say. .. about 2400 of them. They would then look astonished. That's what I wanted. Otherwisethere are other options. Thanks for the comment though.

 defiant1 says:  Mar 5, 2010. 8:00 PM  REPLYI've read this instructible before but it's still so cool.

 deceiver says:  Mar 6, 2010. 3:02 AM  REPLY thanks a lot. I still think of it fondly.

 deceiver says:  Jun 1, 2008. 1:59 AM  REPLYThe redemption center. In Maine we recycle our soda bottles. We turn them in to centers for a nickel each. You can buy them back too.

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