Incredible Soda Bottle Pontoon Boat

Step 2 Floatilla

About 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 it would float about 50 percent of the boat below the surface. I was right.

Comments

[ecarroll1]

Here in SW VA we have a Coke plant and I can get 50 gal plastic drums that are fused together at top and bottom and only the lid which is a pain in the rear to get out is the only "leak" point. You have to buy 8 at a time and you get 8 for $40. 8 of those should float a "titanic" sized pontoon.

[bnsfwarbonnet]

if those are two liter bottles, u guys drank 4800 liters of soda. wow

[robertg]

Deceiver, where did you get all the bottles?

[Silence]

I 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]

I 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 was about 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 in the water. The barrels on their sides were at least 60% out of the water.

[zer6]

is there ever any problem with the barrels leaking?

[deceiver]

Yes, 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]

Those 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 point the cap.

[nunja business]

Ummm ... 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?

[deceiver]

 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 water completely. The point was that it is an expense and difficult to built and seal pontoons. The bottles solved that problem.

[nunja business]

Gotcha! I thought the pics were while it was being dismantled and I assumed that was partially broken down.

[deceiver]

The 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.

[moddedpryck]

haha I was just thinking to myself, that's like $120 worth of bottles. I'm a Mainer as well, it's definitely a cool idea with all the little ponds and lakes around.

[deceiver]

 Yes it is. In southern Maine we have hundreds of lakes. Just the small area of several miles here we have 22.

[moddedpryck]

Southern Maine huh? You ever heard of Dayton? it's a tiny little town near waterboro lol

[deceiver]

 Dayton, Yes, I was a teacher at Massabesic schools. Waterboro is one of the town in that school union. The school i taught at was in Waterboro. The jr. high.

[moddedpryck]

Small world!

[tornadolikefire]

in michigan we get ten cents each!

[deceiver]

Yes, but you pay the ten cents up front when you buy the soda. You get it back when you redeem them.

[logman234]

I live in Wisconsin where there is no tax and we just collect bottles and drive them up to the UP and get 10 cents for each bottle.

[slothman]

the trick is to go bottle and can collecting on the ground in trash and stuff. that way you don't pay for them. :) it sounds like a dirty job but someone has to do it.

[tornadolikefire]

i dunno. how much is a soda in maine? i think they're all about the same price. 1.00 for a 20 oz.?

[Grey_Wolfe]

Deceiver's right, they include the redemption price in the cost of the drink. They do the same thing in California. Though, like you said, this doesn't usually make a noticeable difference in the price per region. That's because the cost difference is often covered by the retailer. Fact is, they'd lose more money increasing the price, usually.

[carpespasm]

Soda is a rediculously profitable product anyway. A huge soda that sells for $1.25 in a taco bell only cost's 10 cents to the store so I'd imagine the 10c doesn't hurt stores too much. 1100% profit and 1200% aren't too far apart.

[lucek]

really you can buy them back! now I have 2 questions can you buy them back in Iowa, and where are the closest redemption centers to the border?

[deceiver]

I don't know if about iowa, but if you go to a redemption center they get 7 cent in maine for them that's how they make money. So you'd have to pay more here. usually you return bottles to the store. But each town usually has one or more redemption centers. Some states don't recycle so you can't go someplace to buy them back.

[lucek]

Iowa is the closest state to Michigan that has a 5 cent deposit so if you can buy them for 7 cents and bring 1,000 across the boarder that's $30 profit. 10,000=$300 100,000=a new boat!

[Rainh2o]

If your caught bringing them across the border to recycle bottles here in Michigan you are fined and put into jail.

[lucek]

really. never knew that.

[Grey_Wolfe]

A recycling business where you buy stuff from one recycling center and return it to another? That's brilliant, if you can purchase enough at one time to cover the cost in time and fuel.

[rrrmanion]

maybe in t one, they just sell them back and get 2 cents

[tornadolikefire]

you can just look on the top of the can or above the upc on the bottle and it says what states you can return them to and how much you get. i think michigan is the only state that you get ten cents. i don't know about where you can redeem them, i go to meijer, but they meijer only exists in michigan, illionois, and ohio i think. good luck!

[crickle321]

Would pressurizing each bottle add any significant buoyancy? I figure the room temperature air pressure would reduce when in contact with cold water.

[brittohalloran]

Pressurizing the bottles would not add buoyancy unless the size of the bottle grew. In fact, if you just crammed more air and the bottle didn't expand, the bottle just became more heavy (only slightly). Buoyancy is only dependent on the volume of the water displaced, i.e. the volume of the outside of the bottle. The fact that the water level changes with seasons is interesting. What must be happening is that the cold water does cause a significant enough change in internal bottle pressure to cause the bottles to shrink down a little.

[crickle321]

I agree with you that buoyancy is dependent on the properties of displacement. I should have added to my question that I meant pressurizing as making the bottle firm and difficult to dent.

Empty plastic bottles at normal atmospheric pressure (with lid) can be squeezed easily. Compressing the bottle would decrease the volume and affect displacement. My idea wasn’t to make the bottle grow but just maintain its buoyancy underwater.

Fresh water produces approx 0.43 psi per foot, so if the boat’s lowest point is 3ft then the lowest bottles are squeezed by about 1.29 psi. Granted the volume lost per bottle would be small but depending on the boat size, the net loss could decrease by a several bottles worth of buoyancy.

[brittohalloran]

this is actually a good point. pressurizing would prevent against bottle crinkle both from depth and cold. creating some kind of pressure chamber that you could fill the bottles with almost warrants another whole instructable. another idea would be to fill the bottles with really cold air, then close them so that when they come back to atmospheric temperature, they are above atmospheric pressure.

[crickle321]

Yeah, a pressurized chamber would be quite extravagant. One teaspoon of dry-ice would probably do the trick.

[Kveldulf]

An easier, safer way to pressurize bottles is to put them in the freezer with the lid off for a while, then take them out and immediately cap them. As they return to room temperature, they pressurize. I've done this to push dents out of mangled bottles. Even easier would be to build the boat in winter and leave the bottles outside prior to capping. That way you're not complicating things (merely changing where you store the bottles), but you still gain any benefits pressurization offers. As has been mentioned, the idea works great as is, so the cold air method is as far as I'd been willing to go to try to "improve" on things. No point in using pop bottles if your going to make things overly complicated anyway.

[deceiver]

I just took the boat completely apart. I had about 40 of those huge clear plastic bags that they store bottles in. Winter maybe, but boy, I'd have to have a pretty large freezer! And ironically half the bottles, the ones below water line, were collapsed about 30%. I think that over the years either the cap seal leaked some or air escaped via the plastic much as it does in a balloon over time.

[crickle321]

Man, that sounds like a better part of an afternoon. Was it winterizing or just masochistic fun? ;-)