§ 01 — THE SETUP
A Marine Railway, a Cabin on Top, and One Very Big Foundation
The Moon River project is different from most of what we build. It’s a dry-land boathouse — a marine railway at the water level for pulling the boat out of the river, and a cabin structure sitting on top of that base. The boat doesn’t float in a slip here. It comes out of the water entirely. The building is the dock.
What you notice first on site is the foundation. It’s massive — disproportionately so. That’s intentional, and the reason took some engineering conversations to work through.
§ 02 — THE BUOYANCY
Designing a Building You're Worried Might Leave the Ground
When your foundation is essentially at river level, the engineer’s concern isn’t just load — it’s lift. We worked through the buoyancy of this structure with the project engineer: the concern was that frost heaving, combined with high water, could push the whole building upward. Not a typical design problem.
The solution was more concrete. Significantly more. Footings at the water line, a foundation massive enough to resist the upward forces, and deliberate holes through the foundation wall to let water in and out during flood events. The concrete is durable enough to handle inundation. Open the door, the water moves through, the building stays put.
§ 03 · THE TOUR
Walk the Moon River Dry Land Boathouse Foundation
An early site walkthrough with Vertex Custom Carpentry. The marine railway access, the concrete scope, the deck columns, and the flood strategy — about five minutes.
§ 04 — THE CONCRETE
Vertex Custom Carpentry and the Decisions That Keep This Standing
Vertex Custom Carpentry is the contractor on the Moon River project, and they coordinated closely with their concrete subcontractor to sequence the foundation pour ahead of the high water window — everything in place before the river rose. The deck columns on the lakeside are heavy. The kind of sizing that looks like overkill on paper and reads as exactly right once you understand what they’re resisting. All those footings are tied together into one connected system. No isolated piers. One foundation.
§ 05 — THE THROUGH-LINE
Building for What the River Might Become
The Moon River Dry Land Boathouse is a lesson in designing for conditions you can predict but can’t control. The river floods. The water level varies. The frost heaves. The answer wasn’t to fight any of those forces — it was to build something massive enough and permeable enough that the forces move through without doing damage. Vertex and the engineering team made that work. More videos to come as the cabin structure goes up above.
