Amsterdam is inevitably linked to water. With an average altitude of three meters below sea level, its inhabitants have developed the ingenuity necessary to gain ground to the sea. Throughout about 100 kilometers of channels, the city today has more than 2,500 floating houses, including the 46 homes that make up the Schoonschip neighborhood.
Located in an old industrial zone of the north, this community of 144 inhabitants He has created a pioneering project to live on water with all the comfort of land homes: houses have light, heating, air conditioning and water intake.
Each house has been built with a different design, but with a common philosophy: Optimize the use of energy and maximize your relationship with the environment. Thus, a part of the house roof incorporates a green cover, a space to grow food that also improves thermal insulation and incorporates a system to take advantage of rainwater.
The solar panels of each house are also located on the roofs, which generate the electrical energy that each house uses. The self -consumption goes one step further in this unique community, since the batteries of the basement of each house allow to store the surpluses of energy that do not use and exchange it with other neighbors. In Schoonschip, there are a total of 516 solar panels for 46 homes with a single connection to the national electricity grid.
All Schoonschip’s homes have two independent water systems: a sewage network and the usual current water network for consumption. Additionally, together with the Waternet company they are already developing a pilot project with which to obtain electricity processing the wastewater in the bathroom in a biorefinería.
Cities like Baltimore and New York are already studying how to transfer this model of floating homes to their territories. And Schoonschip is already an example of how it is possible to create unique homes in exceptional environments with a Intelligent use of energy To live in extraordinary places.