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Comment by t0mas88 | Hacker News Reader

People don't really live there, these are holiday/recreational homes. My family owns two of those islands with a holiday home.

Typically you use them for the weekend. My mom for example lives in a busy city and has a small garden, she uses the holiday home as a weekend getaway and a place to keep the sailing boat.

The Netherlands are small and this area is very central, about 20 minutes drive from Amsterdam or Utrecht. So most owners use it in the same way.

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Curious, how does it smell? Living in an old dredged peat bog sounds like smell could be a challenge.

With standing water yes, but this is not standing water.

You're not allowed to live there officially, but some people do.

Yes but those mostly live landside, there are holiday homes at the edge of the lake as well. There was a plan to allow permanent use, but I think it now changed to only allowing it for people that already live there and no new cases.

Seems a shame in a housing crisis.

There is a reason for it. Infrastructure, access roads, public transit stops, build quality, utilities. The Netherlands has very high standards for homes and the direct surroundings and these homes do not meet those criteria. You would also have significantly more emissions if people started living there which would go against the emission limits for nearby nature.

Let me guess, no sewage disposal.

Imagine the postman every day…

The housing crisis in the west is largely not a lack of land or places to build, but an issue of building being too onerous for a variety of reasons.

Inaccessible lake homes being allowed to be used as a primary residence will not fix it.

Yeah earlier this year I biked from Utrecht to Amsterdam, and there are huge empty lots in the southeast part of Amsterdam. I don’t mean “charming natural areas,” I mean wide open lots next to gas stations and shopping malls.

> You're not allowed to live there officially

why not?

Because they're meant for recreational purposes, and those places usually don't adhere to strict guidelines the NL has for "living homes". But since the housing crisis, they have been actually allowing it in some places.

I saw some photos with ladders from the water. Does people go swimming there, is the water clean?

Yes lots of people swim in both the lake and the narrow parts. The lake also has a few sand beaches that are popular in the summer. And designated swimming areas with shallow water for kids like this: https://share.google/5bko4Xpb0tzkfEChJ

There is an app to check water quality. In general it's fine to swim in, but at high temperatures sometimes algae form. That's common in lots of these kinds of lakes in the Netherlands.

Are they connected to the sewer system? Or do they discharge their effluence into the lake?

> Or do they discharge their effluence into the lake?

Given this is the Netherlands and this appears to be a wealthy area, I'm quite sure they don't. Guessing they either have septic tanks or holding tanks that need to be pumped regularly.

I have a degree which allows me to work in few fields, but wastewater management is one of those fields (which I have worked in, front-line (directly) >gross<): no water is "clean" — it's varying shades of "acceptable"

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There is a running joke (hundred+ years now) that the famous "Ruby Falls" on Lookout Mountain is in fact better named "Poopy Falls" – since the primary water source are the few hundred septic drainlines higher-up the mountain's-top.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_Falls>

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If you have any open cuts/sores, do NOT swim in any outdoor water.

So this is the Dutch equivalent of a cottage?

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