Hacker News Reader

Comment by mattowen_uk | Hacker News Reader

OK, UK clarification...

He says: ' The house is what in English apparently is called an allotment.'

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 'temporary' structures, and you are not allowed to live in them.

The 'house' he shows, is massive compared to a 2.5m x 2m shed you typically see on British allotments.

That said, kudos on converting it into a liveable home. If only this option was more available to zero-income or homeless people....

View on HN

very much down to the local council, but the vast majority would say "Noooooope" if you asked permission to put one up.

Having said that though, several of the "old boys" on my mum's allotment had fucking huge sheds to keep pigs and chickens in. They were the full width of the allotment and a good few meters long.

However. If you do have a place to put a temporary structure in, I can recommend: https://www.tuin.co.uk/Office-Log-Cabin.html (Although I bought mine when they were £4k).

With insulation they are warm/cheap to heat. Lots of space to put solar on the roof. Really strong and well made, and easy to put together. The hardest part is making the base, everything else is pretty simple.

This is really nice and relatively cheap, thanks!

How much time did it take to assemble, not including the base?

How did you isolate it?

The assembly can be done in ~three days with two people.

on your own its about double that time. The hardest part is putting the windows in, as they are really heavy ~50-80kgs. The process is really simple, its pretty much lego.

I used rockwool 100mm bats, that are held in place with osb boards. The Tuin wiki have tips on Attaching things to the walls in a way that allows shrinking and growing.

The only thing I think I would have done differently is putting the roof insulation on the outside, under the EDPM layer, rather than on the inside in the rafters.

I've had it for a good 4ish year, I have replaced the double glazing for coated panels. They are about 3x more insulating

It cost $11,000, lots of housed working people don't have access to that much capital.

Even if they're not 17.

Check out prices in Toronto, Canada. Need a few more zeros[1]. Housing prices are out of control.

[1] https://www.blogto.com/real-estate-toronto/2021/08/new-toron...

The blog post is about allotment so not a fair comparison. However, its supply and demand, extremely high demand and influx of people who want to live in Toronto.

There are places outside of Toronto, Canada which are affordable and have better price to comfort ratio. London Ontario, Gatineau Quebec, Regina Sask, Calgary Alberta are quite affordable and have all the modern life style options available.

That's true of essentially everywhere. The Bay Area is something of an outlier--partly because of geography--but there are a number of large expensive metros that you can still get to pretty affordable housing by driving an hour or two. (Or even taking a commuter rail in some cases.) To say nothing of the many metros that aren't especially expensive.

London is better than Toronto, but I'm not sure I'd call it affordable anymore. Real estate prices for a basic detached home have more than doubled in the last 5 years.

But if you have a not-terrible job, you'd be able to get that much in a loan to repay over a few years. At that point, as long as it's below rent level, you're winning.

I assumed he was in the US as he quoted a price in dollars.

Sadly I'm not even allowed a shed on my allotment.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com