UK's first amphibious house floats on Marlow's riverbank

The UK’s first amphibious house built on the Marlow river banks was featured on Grand Designs on Wednesday.

Andy and Nicky Bruce have spent over £1.1 million building their dream home on a private island.

Building on the plot, originally cost them £350,000 started in May 2013 was plagued by problems from the start. A dock style structure has been built, going down to a depth of 5 metres and excavating 1,000 tons of earth.

Car access is not available onto the island and so a chain ferry was built to transport equipment on and off the island. The first of these capsized, but another one was provided by the second contractors the Bruce’s used.

Specially designed by BACA architects, instead of defending against floods, the house will rise up to allow excess water underneath the building and will have a three-tiered garden designed to act as an 'alert-system'.

The building will be able to rise up to a maximum of 2.5 metres and is the first house of its kind in the UK.

When filming for the programme stopped in September 2014 they had been building for 17 months and still have to finish off the house interior.   

Andy told show presenter Kevin McCloud that it “never felt like too much work” and “blind optimism and complete ignorance” were what had allowed them to complete the difficult engineering side of the project.