The Dutch Community Where People Live on Strips of Land in a Lake

BBowes-Lyon about 4 hours ago 38 commentsRead Article on core77.com

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Discussion (38 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

t0mas88•about 3 hours ago

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.

hn_throwaway_99•about 1 hour ago

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

spiderfarmer•33 minutes ago

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

sundache•about 3 hours ago

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

t0mas88•about 3 hours ago

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.

CalRobert•about 3 hours ago

Seems a shame in a housing crisis.

Epa095•about 1 hour ago

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

t0mas88•21 minutes ago

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.

tromp•about 2 hours ago

You may find this area on google maps at https://www.google.com/maps/@52.1792241,5.0288801,516m

DivingForGold•about 3 hours ago

I read these properties are actually some of the most expensive properties in The Netherlands ($ million dollar).

But no electricity (need generator) and you cannot drive your car to your lakehouse.

Plus, I bet the mosquitos are horrible, it is a former swamp.

t0mas88•about 2 hours ago

There is electricity now, but it's quite new. Before that ours used to run on solar + batteries, you don't want a noisy generator in the middle of a nature area. A holiday home doesn't need that much electricity, warm water and heating use gas.

Prices are typical for this side of the country.

sajithdilshan•25 minutes ago

I was gonna say the same about the mosquitos. Also, the mosquito-borne diseases in Europe are increasing and one definitely don't wanna catch dengue fever

retired•about 2 hours ago

Easily over a million for the ones without neighbors. The most expensive one was listed for 13 million.

These are holiday homes for wealthy elites in Amsterdam. You either go there straight from Amsterdam by helicopter or you have a chauffeur drive/boat you there. These people don’t drive themselves.

But probably not for long with non-primary real estate being taxed at 2.2% a year.

nsm•about 2 hours ago

Is this area the inspiration for the Gyptians in The Golden Compass?

Deukhoofd•about 3 hours ago

I wonder how they're doing right now with water levels reaching critical low points.

t0mas88•about 3 hours ago

Water levels in this area are tightly managed by pumps. Also in normal times they pump water in and out to keep a specific level. All of this is lower than the Amsterdamrijnkanaal, so without pumps it would flood, water doesn't naturally flow out of this place only from evaporation.

AnodicElegy•about 2 hours ago

Looks lovely. I wonder if it has good fishing.

t0mas88•8 minutes ago

With a boat, as far as I know the sides aren't good fishing spots. There is a website about it: https://www.vissenoploosdrecht.nl/fotos/

lefra•about 3 hours ago

Obnoxious cookie banner with no "reject all" button. Too bad, it sounded interesting.

pwg•about 1 hour ago

With UblockOrigin blocking all Javascript by default there was no cookie banner, just the article and photographs.

HelloUsername•about 1 hour ago

And on iOS? Which is maybe what they're using

clickety_clack•about 3 hours ago

Isn’t that actually illegal under GDPR? There’s a reason all the other sites allow you to opt out and it’s not because they want to do that.

dlcarrier•41 minutes ago

Core77 doesn't do any business in the EU, so it probably isn't a concern. There's a few states in the US with cookie banner requirements, so it was probably designed around that.

CalRobert•about 3 hours ago

Violating gdpr is apparently legal. But even having opt out instead of opt in is in violation

retired•about 3 hours ago

Yes. But it is not enforced. The largest Dutch tech website is not GDPR compliant.

yieldcrv•about 3 hours ago

I googled peat so you dont have to

Peat is a soft, spongy material made from dead plants that did not fully rot. It forms very slowly in wet, swampy places called bogs

It is used as fuel as well as fertilizer

_puk•about 2 hours ago

It is also a fantastic carbon sink.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/02/21/headway/peat-...

"Although peatlands make up just 3 percent of land on Earth, they store twice as much carbon as all the world’s forests combined."

Nice it was historically just dug up and the leftovers turned into expensive holiday homes.

psjs•about 1 hour ago

If you add enough heat, pressure and (geological) time it becomes coal!

culi•about 2 hours ago

Anybody whose done any amount of gardening or has houseplants is probably familiar with peat. Though its harvest is destructive to the unique peat bog environments it forms

zulux•about 2 hours ago

There's a huge push to go peat-free, and I agree 95%.

There are just a few uses for peat that don't have an alternative. I mention this to fellow gardeners because if you go 100% peat-free, you'll end up with an expensive disaster and, out of frustration, may go back to peat entirely.

I think it's not productive to ignore the small corner cases where peat is almost a requirement.

dlcarrier•38 minutes ago

Next, google "bog butter" to see one of their more interesting uses.

al_borland•about 2 hours ago

It is also used to give whisky a smokey taste.

clickety_clack•about 3 hours ago

It usually holds many times its solid weight in water. If you add load to it by building something on it (without designing around the ground conditions) it can compress to a fraction of its volume, resulting in ground settlements that can be very large.

retired•about 1 hour ago

Can also be used to build a home. Up to 1940 that is how the lowest class in The Netherlands lived. Plaggenhutten, homes made out of peat, straw, manure.

mistrial9•about 3 hours ago

pre-industrial peoples in some parts of the world used this material extensively.. some still do