The housing shortage is high. The shortage is particularly acute for young people and refugees. At the same time, especially in international comparison, many Dutch people live quite large.
Enough space to offer (temporary) hospitality in an empty attic room or garden house. Then it is necessary that that room has a separate kitchen and sanitary facilities. Expensive? Complicated? Not too bad. Costs: 1,500 to 2,000 euros. Difficulty: do the odd job yourself for two days and hire a handyman/woman for one day.
Peter Arts, architect in Rijswijk, calculated and drew it. He has already designed quite a few ‘tiny houses’. In themselves, they are not the solution to the housing crisis. As a rule, these mini houses are located in nature, without connection to electricity, gas and/or running water. At the request of NRC Arts has made a design for a small ‘wet cell’, which can easily be fitted into a house or outbuilding.
‘Home’ solution
These are tips from the designer. Take:
Six block pallets (1 by 1.20 metres), twelve waterproof wood fiber boards (1.22 x 2.44 metres) and twenty pine beams (5 x 5 centimetres, 2.40 meters long). Cost: approximately 600 euros.
Screws, metal connection corners. And kit. Do not skimp on this, for watertight ‘sealing’. Cost: about 100 euros.
A worktop, shower tray, sink and toilet. Advice: don’t spend a cent on this, or at most 100 euros. All this can be found for an apple and an egg in thrift stores and via social media.
Hire an experienced handyman, for example via the Werkspot.nl site. Have him or her supply and install the pipes and cords. This is a day’s work, at a maximum of 500 euros and 250 euros for material costs.
The six pallets form the floor of this structure. Pipes and drainage can be easily concealed below. Screw on some fiber boards. Cover it with a seamless roll of vinyl. The walls – also made of fiber boards, with a frame of firewood beams – are easy to place on top of this floor. That is a matter of good tools: screw drill, saw, spirit level, drill. Finally, connecting all pipes takes one more working day – and that’s it.
You really need to have a drain for kitchen and bathroom nearby, otherwise it will be quite complicated in terms of costs, implementation and permits
What does Peter Arts, as an experienced craftsman, think of this ‘homely’ solution? “A nice idea, but not easy to fit everywhere. You really need to have a drain for the kitchen and bathroom nearby, otherwise it becomes quite complicated in terms of costs, implementation and permits.”
Ventilation is another point. “When cooking, washing dishes and showering you have to deal with water vapour. That does not have to be a problem if this structure is placed next to a window that you can open. With mechanical exhaust air, this is immediately much more expensive.”
Officially it is not allowed to just add an apartment to an existing residential address. But: the government ‘tolerates’ everything. Anyone can redecorate a guest room and determine the furnishing themselves. And should an official object, this kitchen unit/bathroom is quickly dismantled again.