INSIDE A FLOATING HOME IN AFRICA, GHANA | Moved from America to build a floating house in Akosombo

[Music] i have no regrets seven i really love being here everything's so pristine and it's natural and i really enjoy it here i i barely live here hi coico hello vanessa how are you yeah good thanks nice to see you good to see you and welcome to the swan thank you so much arriving in style well that's how we've got to do it 4x4 yeah so we're here at akasombo beside lake walter you have built this incredible floating house here that's right so i want to hear all about it and i also heard that you've actually moved from florida that's right back to ghana so we can get into that a little bit as well sounds good i'll be glad to do that oh perfect welcome once again this is the swan and it's the only floating structure of its kind on the water lake wow yeah so enjoy it while you're on it i mean you can feel that we're floating because it's kind of like being on a boat a little bit but it's quite steady it's sturdy yeah but absolutely you got to feel like you're on water that element's got to be there why did you come up with this idea of making a floating structure well it was based on necessity so we have very limited space on the waterfront so there's always been a need to uh explore and venture out to new spaces so looking around the biggest space we could find was water so we tried to put some structures and develop whatever it takes to construct some water so we came up with a swan so part of the swan yeah so this is the first area we arrived to it's like an outdoor seating area and swimming pool yes but the swimming pool is the lake the shrimp is the lake and you can't get it any better because this is fresh water water has been tested and it's good and it's you know merely bacteria free so it's safe to swim in this tank i've been doing this for like the last eight years and i've had no problem okay that's perfect because i didn't know if you could swim in the lake or not so it's great to hear so this this pool you only find it here at the floats okay this was all conceptualized here it's so peaceful here did you come up with this whole idea yourself i got everything on my laptop oh wow that's the nice thing about sitting out here you know when you sit out here you're able to think and you know come up with new ideas so to think that this was just an idea and now you've made it into a reality that's right it makes me very happy when did you move to the states and why um i left ghana in 1996 after my a level okay i went to infants open after i found him i left to the states you know led mechanical engineering um done a lot of work in florida both in corporate and private sector designing houses you know done several houses uh been into the air conditioning industry okay so when it comes to buildings right yeah you know i know it all yeah you know and i've ventured into high-tech industries you know okay working on pacemakers implantable pumps wow world leading technology companies and stuff like that so and then when did you decide now is the time to go home ah i needed some space to relax and you know venture into more undeveloped areas where my skills could you know make an impact and there was no place than coming back home to ghana and how long have you been back now uh so since 2019 i've been back i spent most of my time over here all right about 98 of my time i spend it here oh yeah so um this is the swan is the entrance and you're welcome come in the first thing that hits me is the smell is divine like this is my favorite smell and it's by design it's very purple i love the wood i love the wood so is there a story behind this wood yes so all this wood i bought it from a local company here um they specialize in extracting wood from under the water wow so most of this wood has been under the water lake for as long as about 60 years or more okay um so well and i'm i'm very happy to use wood that is low carbohydrates yeah yeah so this is very hard wood it's called cane and it smells just so so nice i love it so this wood is called uh masonia i i didn't get it from the volta lake i wish i got it oh yeah okay but i got it from uh somewhere in ghana okay yeah it's also really really really nice you know so i just wanted something to complement my flow and just give it that whole wood feel the doors are swirled so did you decide on the design of the doors yes so all the specs are on my laptop i decided to exact millimeter wow so i just feel bad for the carpenters i mean they were under extreme pressure to produce and you were always there watching that girls i had to be here yeah do you think to run a successful business here in ghana you have to be on the ground absolutely okay especially in the initial stages you definitely have to be on the ground spend a lot of time and supervise everything yeah that's very critical so how long did it take you to build this one so i started in october okay um so i was about five six months yeah and the building process i saw a video of you under yeah yeah yeah underneath and i thought wow dedication oh yeah can you actually stand under here at this point no no oh so deep yeah it's pretty deep it's it's about um 15 feet where we are okay 18 feet of water what was the the build process like what sort of challenges did you come across i'll say weather oh right okay well it's on a typical day when we're doing all our welding and doing all that work and the wind just comes in over here we have something called the tropical squalls that just happens it's just about minimum eight meters per second winds that just comes in high winds and it's really powerful so we had to design around all that you know there are so many variables right and water levels we have to keep relocating the structure and keep it connected to you know electricity for welding and stuff like that oh right okay you know so can it move absolutely you tell us where you want to go of it i could take you across the river you told me how you want to go to bed facing like sun sets or wake up facing sunrise that is so so cool we will reorient it for you wow it's so it's really really unique like i've never seen anything like this anywhere in the world oh here we are you've created it i saw i swear that only one place and it was in my head so then when you were actually building what is this constructed with how is it floating yeah so it's uh all based on buoyancy we're using a steel tubes okay cylindrical steel tubes quite a number of them and we have other floatable devices under just for redundancy and for safety uh increased factor of safety and stuff like that would you be open to building these for other people or you're just building them for yourself absolutely i would like to build a father all right okay i would like to see a whole community on the walter lake oh that's a great idea yeah you ready for one yeah yeah i'm i'm ready for you i want to be able to just move my house wherever i want to move this section of the video is sponsored by skillshare thank you so much to skillshare for sponsoring this video allowing me to bring out free content on my channel skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of classes from animation to music production to gardening and it covers so many different things currently i'm taking productivity master class principles and tools to boost your productivity by ali abdel who i absolutely love and what is really helping me about this class is the fact that i want to live the life of my dreams i want to be able to create youtube videos while spending a lot of time with my kids and that means i need to be productive and i'm learning so many tips and tricks from this video if you're interested in taking a skillshare class then head down into my description and the first 1000 people to click on the link will get one month free trial of skillshare enjoy so the reason why i'm here is because i met claudia a couple of weekends ago at the meet and create and she told me all about this floating house in the middle of the lake and i said i have to be here so claudia did the interior design of this house and she's going to let us know a little bit about that and we can have a full tour of this one hey claudia how are you doing finally made it down welcome yeah thanks so much i was so excited honestly when you first showed me that image i thought wow i've never seen anything like it like i was just saying to koiku so could you show me around the whole place like a sort of tour yeah definitely so i mean we could probably just start this space over here so it's quite open at the moment but ideally we probably will get like a sofa area here just for people to relax etc you can go to this one here [Music] i wouldn't say i'm an interior designer but i am about creating positive spaces you know like i said you know i do kind of my vinfit training with the ladies and every last week of the month we do a restoration week so when i came here i said this is exactly where i want to do it i need to make sure that everything is intact and hence the reason why i elected myself to put everything in place a lot of these pieces were sourced from a craft really difficult to try and get pieces in a custom bowl so you kind of it's not like you're local i don't know shops you know back in london where you can just go online and get what you need to get it was quite challenging so we come in here as well and you can have a shower with the view again just trying to pick anything that kind of symbolizes wildlife freshness plants etcetera and then just the calming colors as well yeah and the smell it's just i can't get it yeah i mean smells as well i think that's another thing about me is i really love nice mouths yeah um so it's just amazing and then you've got this room over here and then obviously you've got the view over here you just open the window and it's just peace peace it's just absolutely divine and i went into this bathroom for the first time and i saw this view i think this has to be the best view here it's like a picture the way it's framed so beautiful and then this is where we have the um just kind of like a communal kitchen area so again you know just quite pretty basic but you know you've got your amenities like your microwave and you know fruit basket etc so thanks so much for showing me around the swan i'd love to find out the other things you can do here at the float so maybe we can go and check those out definitely you ready yeah i'm ready [Music] and you could get up and walk around and enjoy the pristine waters [Music] so i've had such a lovely time meeting kwaku meeting claudia again and having a look around this floating house in ghana in akasambo i hope you enjoyed this video please do hit that subscribe button and press the bell so you're notified every time i make an upload and let me know what you thought about this house in the comments section below see you later bye you

Channel: Vanessa Kanbi

Views: 74,320

Keywords: real estate in ghana, accra ghana, building a house in ghana, houseboats, luxury boat homes, house boat, house boats, houseboat living, futuristic house design, inventions, yacht, tiny house, tiny house on water, tiny house design, floating homes, floating house, ghana, floating home in africa, house in ghana, building in ghana, air b n b ghana, places to stay ghana, the float ghana, the float, the float akosombo, living in ghana, building a house, building project

Id: 5BmdDkOniWE

Length: 12min 54sec (774 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 15 2021