Houseboat - Full Floating Cabin, Porch & Garden

A houseboat sounds like a liberating place to live – but limiting as well for those who like to relax on the front porch, sun on the back deck or tend to growing plants in a garden. This floating homestead blows traditional boat-based homes out of the water, so to speak. How much to buy it? Well, the current owners purchased it a decade ago for around twenty-five thousands dollars USD. Unreal, no?

Located on Powell Lake in coastal British Columbia, the floating house itself is almost absurdly traditional – a simple twenty-by-twenty-foot A-frame with one and a half stories. The support structure beneath is anything but that simple: giant logs lashed together with inch-thick steel cable, tightened with winches and hydraulic jacks and fastened with railroad spikes.

Other floating accessory spaces include a boat dock, wood shed and even a complete vegetable garden. The power, too, is pleasantly sustainable – green sources like solar and wind and complimented by low-level propane use for cooking, refrigeration and supplemental lighting. Fishing, hunting, swimming – the ultimate off-the-great retreat or rustic retirement home.

The main floor has two bedrooms, a kitchen, living and dining room – upstairs is the lofted master bedroom. But that is just part of the story. The whole structure sites on a floating forty-by-forty foot platform that effectively quadruples the total square footage on the ‘ground’ (or rather: water) level.

This place is at least one version of paradise. “Now that we have retired, we spend about 75% of the year living in our float cabin. Our lives follow the seasons with wood gathering, gardening, swimming, fishing and enjoying our surroundings. There’s nothing better than getting up early and having a cup of coffee on the deck watching the sun rise over Goat Island to herald in a new day.”