Building A Geodesic Houseboat In Sweden

April 10

I arrived in Sweden after 3 days of driving all the way from France.

The land of never-ending lakes and forests. It wasn’t my first time there, really. I studied in Stockholm―back when I was still doing any study―and fell in love with its archipelago.

As I’ve been approaching my 30s, I was looking for a more permanent place to settle. Happy the man who, like Ulysses, has made a fine voyage, or has won the Golden Fleece, and then returns, experienced and knowledgeable, to spend the rest of his life among his family. I grew weary of roaming the world and yet I have nowhere that truly feels like home.

Sweden is an easy choice. The quality of life is great. The people respect Nature. The country is well connected to the rest of Europe by land and sea. I can see myself living here for a long time, maybe raise a family.

April 16

I settled in a typical Swedish cottage in the countryside. I’ll stay there for 3 weeks and build a houseboat in the backyard.

After careful thoughts, I opted for building a geodesic houseboat instead of buying land. I don’t have the means nor the patience to buy a property, ask for a building permit, and then settle in a place I know little about. A houseboat is a cheaper investment that’ll allow me to move around, unbothered by land ownership and governmental bureaucracy.

The cottage is 50km from the closes city so I first order the floaters. Each floater can carry 250kg and I bought 10 of them.

Then, I bought and transported the wood using my old Opel Corsa and a roof rack.

All I had to do was to follow the digital plan:

I then took all the wood and cut it into beveled struts:

Each strut is then assembled following a pre-calculated triangle shape:

Which looks like this:

The days were cold and the nights colder, so I moved the assembly line inside the cottage next to the woodstove.

Once the assembly was done, I moved the individual triangles to a nearby pond to screw them together.

The deck simply rests on the plastic floaters, which are screwed to the lumber.

May 7

After 3 weeks, the houseboat was ready to launch.

I bought a new $1,000 2-stroke engine and mounted it on the back of the houseboat:

Unfortunately, the launch went wrong: a strut broke and I ended up in the water.

Determined to leave the cottage and start my journey toward Karlstad, I went anyway and spent the night camping on a nearby island.

May 9

Realising the difficulty of the task, I rent another Airbnb in Säffle: the idea is to move the houseboat slowly toward Karlstad every 2-3 days while doing remote freelance work from a studio.

May 29

After sailing for 70km over another 3 weeks, a part of the floating deck holding the geodesic dome broke down because of bad weight distribution. I needed to fix it before moving on.

The fix took me a week. I had to disassemble everything and re-do the floating deck. I kept it simple and went for a 4,5m by 4,5m deck that would be large enough to hold the geodesic dome while allowing me to go around it or lounge in the sun.

Everything went well afterwards:

June 20

On June 20, I finally reach Karlstad and find a quiet spot to leave the boat.

July 18

I bought a rowboat to move around the lake. It’ll come in handy next year when I convert it into a small sailboat to roam the lake and camp on the many islands.

August 1

The next step was to rent a small storage unit to leave my stuff for next year.

I left to Stockholm for a week before flying to France for two weeks for a long awaited break with family.

August 21

Back to Karlstad. I need to have the houseboat ready for Winter.

August 22

I move in another Airbnb by the lake to finish the houseboat.

September 16

As the weather gets colder again, I finish painting and waterproofing the houseboat. I can leave Sweden until next year.