My House

Regarding questions in the comments: Assuming allotments in .dk works roughly as in .se, they are designed not to be actual homes.<p>You&#x27;re not allowed to use them as your listed place of residence; authorities require you to have a &quot;real&quot; residence as well. This can of course be circumvented by claiming you live with a friend and listing yourself at their address, but it&#x27;s illegal and measures will be taken accordingly if you&#x27;re found out - you&#x27;ll surely lose your allotment, if nothing else.<p>Allotments are concentrated to specific areas, typically on municipal or county land rented by a co-op consisting of the inhabitants. Nowadays, most co-ops have installed municipal utilities (water, electricity) but not plumbing for human waste, which means most of them still have outhouses. Outhouse waste management is of course also heavily regulated. Often these utilities, at least water, are turned off during winter.<p>The permanence of allotments is fleeting; many of them are continually moved or chopped off in order to make room for actual residential buildings. They are however very popular among apartment dwellers who move out to their cosy little allotment houses at the first sign of spring.<p>Regarding the OP, nice work! Looks great.

Nice little house! I did exactly the same, with the same costs, and lived there happily for several years during my studies at University. It was a great time and a good place for a single young man with a dog.<p>I used a wood burning bath stove with a 100 liter copper tank to store heat for the night. It worked great. The 100 liter of water kept heat for many hours and the tank surface radiated it slowly into the room. This was much more convenient than a simple wood stove. I had only to add wood one time per day in autumn and two times per day in winter.

This is an article showing how I made my allotment hut my home.

This appears to be in Denmark where these allotments are called &#x27;kolonihaver&#x27;.<p>Traditionally &#x27;kolonihaver&#x27; were intended for recreational use and vegetable gardens for workers living in apartments in the larger cities. You were not allowed to live there full time and you should always have an ordinary home beside it.<p>Unfortunately the rules are not followed, and for a very large part they get used as a small property with a tiny house for the whole year. Not really for recreational use or growing vegetables - mostly for living cheap in expensive cities. I say unfortunately, as living in them are clearly an tax evasive action.<p>No property tax is payed, while their values rises like most ordinary properties. The Danish property tax is intended to tax the value gained by increasing property values. So when you live in one of these kolonihaver this way you are doing tax fraud. Even though it&#x27;s mostly never investigated and punished.<p>It easily gets glorified as a smart and cheap way of living, when you present it like this in a blog post shared on a global forum(HN). But unless you voluntarily pay tax on the monetary gain you&#x27;ll have the day you sell it again, I despise your lack of contribution to, and participation in, our Danish society.

I’m not sure allotment is the right word, at least in England allotments are much more intended for hobbyist gardening, they’re small, often you’re not even allowed a shed, staying there would be unlikely practically or legally. Isn’t this closer to the Summer Cabin concept in Scandinavia?

What about sanitation?<p>How did you get electricity from the grid? Do you just tap into an existing property?<p>What about gray water?

This is exactly what in post-Soviet countries is called <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Dacha" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Dacha</a>

Pretty huge shed for an allotment! More like a small unfinihshed (at the start of the article) studio-bungalow that happens to be surrounded by allotments...<p>Did it already have electricity hook up? Water makes sense for an allotment, but you can legally just pipe it in unmetered to your new house? And what about waste water &amp; sewage?

OK, UK clarification...<p>He says: &#x27; The house is what in English apparently is called an allotment.&#x27;<p>In the UK, allotments are about 250 square metres, and can only have a small shed on them that does not having running water or electricity. They are specifically considered &#x27;temporary&#x27; structures, and you are not allowed to live in them.<p>The &#x27;house&#x27; he shows, is <i>massive</i> compared to a 2.5m x 2m shed you typically see on British allotments.<p>That said, kudos on converting it into a liveable home. If only this option was more available to zero-income or homeless people....

God that trenching. The first time I dug a trench for electrical wiring I did it by hand and I swore never again. Just finished an outdoor office shed this month and I used a giant machine to dig the trench. Still took all day and left me sore in every member.

If you&#x27;re in to &quot;young people building their own home&quot; then check out Erik Grankvist building a small cabin in the middle of the forest using only primitive tools.<p>Here&#x27;s a 2 hour video that&#x27;s very relaxing to have on in the background (only the sound of hard work, no speech): <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=BBX5qh09OIE&amp;t=7s&amp;ab_channel=ErikGrankvist" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=BBX5qh09OIE&amp;t=7s&amp;ab_channel=...</a><p>And, yes, he begins by literally chopping down trees.

Not bad for a 17 year old!

It’s lovely. Looks like a great learning experience. Doing this at 17 is even more impressive.

Very cool! Nice solution to the high house prices. You get a residence for a years rent for a lot of people.<p>I guess it would have running water, but what about sewage. Does it have a toilet? Did you use a septic tank. Or are you directly fertilising your patch.

This is the kinds of people I want to track the project output of in the decades to come.

Any idea why you’d want two layers of drywall?

I was going to ask if OP took a sabbatical or something, but then I read he&#x27;s 17 years old. Good job, OP!<p>I struggle for time even to nail a painting on the wall or install a shelf, yet alone something like this.

Very interesting! Where did you learn all the skills you needed to get all of this work done? I&#x27;m curious if YouTube and Google was able to give you all the guidance you needed.

Wow, looks super nice. I think for a lot of people, specially in 3rd world countries, living in a place like that would be a complete upgrade (I&#x27;d do it!).<p>Out of curiosity: what&#x27;s the real reason that it is illegal to live there? What are the gov trying to avoid?

Site is down. 402: PAYMENT_REQUIRED

For all those trying to figure out where this is, his Twitter profile says he lives in Denmark

I do think it would be interesting to see how a neighborhood of these tiny homes fared on the market. With showers, and bathrooms -- of course. I question the viability once you get a partner, man... anything smaller than 2,500 square feet... I think that&#x27;s about 250 square meters... starts to feel small for me with another person living there. BUT... I&#x27;ve grown accustomed to a home office, home gym, guest room...<p>Anyway, it&#x27;s a cool spot! I&#x27;d need a shower, room for at least a queen size bed... king if it&#x27;s 2 people. I wonder where my need for space came from... if it&#x27;s something people are born with. Growing up my parents had a bigger house than I have now, so maybe that&#x27;s it. Ha, I couldn&#x27;t swing this, but impressive you&#x27;ve found a way to avoid mortgage payments. Good on ya!

Bay area this would be $400K

I don&#x27;t see any mention of a bathroom. Did you have to install one?

Since it&#x27;s not used during winters, did you consider making it off-grid with solar power and batteries? I guess cooking would be a problem then though.

I am wondering if 50cm depth for the electrical cables is enough. Due to frost, I would have put them at somewhere around 80cm deep under ground.

I recently had exactly this thought - why not move in an allotments. Looks really well done, congrats!

Interesting project and interesting…person ! At 17, that is quite a lot of done projects, congrats !

Thanks for sharing. I wonder if it&#x27;s legal to live in an allotment in the UK (I doubt it)

...in the middle of my street

Nice work. You should consider putting in a bed that can fit two people in it.

I really could live with this but then I have a wife with borderline hoarding tendencies and 2 teens , it amazing how much crap they all collect and &quot;need&quot;.

@carltheperson The website is down :-(

I&#x27;m confused, I thought an allotment is just a place you grow vegetables, I don&#x27;t think you can live there?

Is this a “kolonihavehus”?

(site appears down)

and why you&#x27;re not allowed to live in it year round? Who knows. Reasons, probably. Good Reasons™ would be my guess.

Most allotments are way smaller than this!

I&#x27;m assuming England?<p>In the states, we don&#x27;t have anything like this, but should.<p>It seems like in the states government goes out of it&#x27;s way to discourage cheap housing.<p>Gov. Neusome did a great job on ADU&#x27;s, but you need a house to put the unit in, or around. What happened is wealth people realized they could remodel their home while putting in a small apartment.<p>When begging for a variance for their bigger home, and guaranteed ADU thanks to Neusome, they promise to rent the ADU out to low income tenants.<p>They get their variance, build a ADU, and turn the ADU into another room for themselfs.<p>The wealthy are foxey.<p>(I&#x27;m looking at you San Anselmo. I see you are now granting Variances, but they appear to be given out to favorite homeowners? I hope this is not what it appears. For years, my little town gladly took in a $1000 fee for a variance, but never ok&#x27;ed one.)<p>adu=accessory dwelling unit variance=a piece of paper indicating you are breaking some zoning rule. wealthy people=foxey

So what happened to the main house? Empty when the shed is in use?<p>If nothing else it looks like a pretty slick way to avoid all building codes. Just run extension cords everywhere, water through garden hoses, dump the toilet bucket into the garden, no need for fire-rated anything. sweet.

That cooker is dangerously close to the fridge. It&#x27;s a fire hazard.