Scandinavian ecovillage rethinks homeownership- no mortgages, no waste

We started here 22 years ago. Well, in 2002 we started out here. This was a big field of corn. There was nothing here, no trees, nothing. We had the idea that we would start a little village. We would make a new village on the principles that we should be market-free and free of garbage. But to be market-free, it means that you need to save up money and you have to build cheap. And it means you build yourself. It's the cheapest. So we bought the land quite cheap here from the community. When we came here, you could look everywhere. There was nothing. So we got a local plan that said here we could make development and experiments. And that was what we wanted. So we have been experimenting very much with a straw bale, a clay plaster, different kind of cleaning system for wastewater. And that was what it was about. It was to show that we can settle in another way, garbage-free. And it was one big experiment 22 years ago. This house, it was the first house we made. There's a lot of experiments here. And it means also, well, we did a lot of faults, but we have experience now. Well, it is used as the common house now. But here we can see material we experimented with. Well, in behind here we have seagrass. We cannot see the window here. But here we have newspapers as insulation. And the wall here is clay plaster. And you can see different. We have used papers, cut woodcuts, cloth, and sawmill dust, and blue mussel shells also. Blue mussel shells, that's different. That works as what? We have a lot of mussel shells in Denmark, a big industry. And the whole house here is standing on mussel shells. You see them right over there. Mussel shells, they stop the humidity from the underground. It gets very dry, and it's good insulation because you have a gap in between. Whole mussel shells, it is about 85 to 90% of air in them. Wait, just where do you get these? Somebody come and dump it? Yeah, there's 100,000 cubic meters a year in Denmark. So do seafood companies come, and they don't want it, and dump it? So it was 20 years ago, we got it for free. It's not like that anymore. It was something I found out 20 years ago. So probably not many people were doing that at the time. No, at that time, it was just garbage for them. This roof is huge. For a green roof, I don't think I've seen anything so round and so big as a green roof. Is that larger than most? Well, a lot of houses here, and it's something we have developed here also. You can see it over there also. What is it? You developed it as... Sedum plants, they do not need much water. If it's dry for three, four months, they don't care. And it means that you only need two, three centimeters of soil to establish them, and it's quite easy, and then it's not so heavy. Because if you have a grass roof, it needs a lot of soil, and it'll be very, very heavy. But these, and this is much beautiful. And it is changing through over the year, and it's very cheap. Sedum, and so you knew all about this, these kind of gardening, because you grew up on a farm. Yeah, a small farm. We are back in the 60s. At that time, what you learned, at that time, it was to work and to save up money. Yes, so I have done that since that time. I'm a good saver, yeah. When we come to the 70s, people become consumers. They become consumers. And instead of saving money, they go to the bank and have bank loans, and so they can consume some more. And that's one of the problems today. It is that we have become consumers, and that, well, we need more and more. So let's answer the idea by this. It is that we want to show we can make a good living on a, well, a much, much smaller need of consuming. Well, this is my house. The wood is from the neighborhood. At that time, it was free to take it. The insulation around the house, it is straw bales combined with a layer of seagrass. So we have good insulation. And then the wall, plastered with clay plaster, inside, outside. And the roof, well, it's again wood, but then upon the wood, there's some paper layer. And then there's, we fire 20 millimeters of clay plaster. And then there is 600 millimeters of chopped straw. And then there's 20 centimeters of whole mussel shells as a kind of ventilation. And then there's a membrane, and then there's a layer of sandy soil, two, three centimeters, and these sedum plants. Does the roof, do these beams have to be extra strong to support all that dirt? Yeah, it's no problem. This is so strong. It's, well, reciprocal construction. And with this timber, you could put much more tons on it. No problem. Why make it round? Well, out in nature, you are not, nothing is square. So to cooperate with nature in a way, I would like to make something that goes into nature. So nature, everything is round. The wood is round. Well, it's much stronger than the squared ones. So it's also a way of thinking that we should not make squared things like that we are doing because we come from nature, and you really relax here. And the other thing it is, well, this room, it is 25 square meters, but you feel like it's a big one because it's round. If it was squared, you would not feel, you would have another feeling. And also it goes up here. It feels like, wow, what a space. I agree with you that this, for example, this room, it feels big. It feels spacious. There's a lot of space. Yeah. So it's also something about architecture that you can form houses with less material, but like a feeling that, wow, there's a lot of space. So you feel confident in here. But I think also because there's so much light and green and all that coming in, it makes it... You are in nature, and when you're sitting here, you're a part of it. This part is only 25 square meters. It's my biggest room. Then I have these two doors for the bedroom because it has been divided, but my children have moved from home now, so we have a bigger bedroom. There's one room in there, and then we have also, yeah, you cannot see, but it's not... How many people when you... Yeah, how many people were living here? Nowadays, we're only living three people now. We have been five. Five and 65 square meters? Yeah. And was that enough space? Yeah, it's fine. It feels big. Having this open to the outside, I think that does something. You feel like... The climate in here is much better than normal houses. Here's my oven where I put on fire in the winter. It's a kind of rugged stove. I call it flex oven because here I can burn normal wood, but I can also burn sticks, I can burn chips, and I can burn pills. It can burn on everything, and it's burning at a high temperature, about 850 to 1,000 centigrades. Then you have clean combustion. And then you go around here in the bench and around into the wall where there's also a part of a solar heater in here. So I get also hot water in the winter by that. In the summer, I get it by the solar system out there. Your windows, are they double-paned or just one? Double. Yeah, yeah. If you have a single glass in Denmark, they'll be so cold in the winter. So you built this oven out of clay? It is clay. Clay, sand, and straw. Okay. In here where it's burning, I have some special bricks, burning bricks. Because it gets so hot? Yeah. Okay. That's it, but it's just around the fire. And I'm just, well, I put it on fire once a day in the winter, and then I use, this box is for one day, 24 hours. There's eight kilos. What is that? What are those offcuts? It is garbage from a factory. And it's very cheap. It means I can heat the house for less than 1,000 kroner, less than $200 a year. And so you built, the oven or the stove feels like part of the home. I mean, is it all, do the walls continue? Is this all part of the same material? It's the same material. Well, the walls are also clay, sand, and I had some stones, and well, I built this. So your heating system, where are the ducts going? Where is the heat going? Well, when I put it on fire, then we start here. In the morning, normally we start on 20 centigrades. Then I put it on fire, 8 o'clock in the morning. But nothing is happening, really. But 2 o'clock in the afternoon, it is about 24 centigrades. It is stored in here, and it comes slowly out as a kind of radiation. And it means that the temperature, when I measure the temperature down here, it's the same here as it is up there. So there is a thermal mass. Yeah. That's it. Yeah, and it's only burning for three quarters of an hour. Not an hour, but half an hour to three quarters, it's burning. And then it stops, and then everything is stored and comes slowly out of the mass. It's a big mass oven, very big mass oven. So it's a thermal mass oven. So you are using it once a day, and that's going to be the whole day of heating. Yeah, next day, until next day. 24 hours. Until next day. Yes. Wow. I do it into a wall, so I get more heat in my house. And then it goes to the next wall in the next room, where I cool it totally down, the smoke. And then it goes out to the smoke cleaner. I put it up to a filter, where I can grow salad in the winter. I'm just building a new one now. This is my greenhouse in the winter. It's heated in the wintertime. It'll be full filled with salads. I have to dig it out now. I have been experimenting with this for 10 years. So the loss of the heat you normally put up through the chimney, it comes out here. It's almost like growing plants is part of the filter. It's nutrition. Here's the engine that takes out the smoke here. There's a pipe into a wall. Here comes the smoke out, and when it comes out here, the smoke is 30 centigrade. So this is heated, and then you can grow salad in the winter. Is it cold here? Yes, yes, it's cold. So you can grow salad in the snow? Down to 10, 20 centigrade, minus. So you're growing salad in freezing temperature, basically. Yeah. Your refrigerator's right in the wall. It is sitting in the wall. Because then it means in the winter, you can close it, shut it off. The backside is outside. Because it insulates. Oh, the backside is... It's outside. So it's cold in Denmark. So you need no electricity in the wintertime. And in the summertime, it delivers the heat outside. So... Because it makes a lot of heat also. But in wintertime, what do you do? Do you just unplug it? Yeah. You unplug it, and it works? Yeah, it's no problem, because it's cold outside. You lower down your use of electricity. It's so easy. When it comes to wintertime, well, I put this on, and then I can close this one in the wintertime, because it's cold outside. This is wheat. Make it into a flour. Ah, you make flour. And I have oats here. I'm still experimenting to take off the shell of it so I can make oat for... Yeah, rolled oats, oatmeal. And out of that, well, you can eat it directly, because you can also make a kind of oat milk. Yeah. I see. So instead of buying it, you just make it yourself. Yeah. It's much cheaper. No garbage. No plastic. Because a part of your idea here is no mortgage, right? No mortgage, no debt. Yeah. But also low cost. And garbage-free. Now we're going to see my wastewater system. Oh, my gosh. You have grapes all over your... It's turned into grapes, tomatoes, cucumbers, whatever. You can grow in a greenhouse. So this is all growing from your greywater? Yes. Well, there's a plastic membrane under here. It's one big storage. There's no outlet here. So here you can see there's water under here. Here you can see now I put it down. It comes up. And during the winter, it comes up, up, up to here. Then it's fulfilled. And then during the summer, well, the plants, what do they need? Well, they need water and our nutrition and urine. And you see they grow. It grows very much. And it means now you have a system. There's no outlet. It means now you have a system where I go out and eat my tomatoes, my cucumbers, go on the toilet and piss, and it comes back here. It's returning. It's in a circle. And now there's no smell. But you have a big box for making plants. It's one of my best inventions. Down here. Yeah. When I can do this, just to show there's water under us. But what contains the water? It is the mussel shells. Here's a membrane one meter down. And there's a layer of 75 centimeters of mussel shells. Then I have 20 centimeters of sandy soil. And during the summer, the plants, they take the water and it goes down, down, down, down. There. Then it's empty. And so then you're only left with dry material down below. Yeah, yeah. But it's nutrition. When it's from household, it's nutrition, all of it. Urine, soap. Soap today in Denmark, it's biological. It's biodegradable. Yeah. Whatever. And then the plants can use them. Do you see a difference in production? This is much more productive. You can see it. It's so productive. We have figs over behind the two fig trees. We have cucumbers. And we have tomatoes. And up here, the main part, grapes. Yeah, it's the grapes. And then I have put up here in my workshop, so I have shallow in the summer. So all this is growing. Is it self-sustaining? Like you don't need to water it? No, no. I'm adding nothing. So what ends up, what's the waste then? Underneath, is there no dry material left? Do you have to clean out? No, no. I go on holiday now. They just grow. I know when I come back, it's even more wild than now. But I do nothing. The only thing I do, it is this. Yeah, here we are. So have people reproduced this? I mean, this just makes sense. Are more people doing this? Yeah, it makes very much sense. All cleaning systems should be made like this. I have figured out, if we did that in Denmark, it would mean we could have 55,000 hectares of greenhouses. But it would take all the wastewater from households in Denmark. And it's also, especially the idea that, well, here we cooperate. I cooperate with nature. And it means we grow together. There's no pollution. There's production. And that's the way we should do everything. So that's why we use very much wood, straw, and clay plaster and things like that. How many homes are here now? There's about 45 houses. And all different types of materials? Or is there consistency about it? There's many kinds of... Well, here where we started, it's very much straw bale houses. And in the end, the new ones, it's more houses with wood and wood insulation. We can see here on the sign how it is today. Here's 10 hectares in total. And some part of it is for free enterprise. This part, where we are now here, this part, it is for free enterprise. I have had a little factory over there where I made the prefab straw bales. And over there, we have made a restaurant. Moment, all the wastewater from there, it's used in the greenhouse over there. And it is made in the prefab straw bales. It's much easier to make your own business if you are market-free. Yeah, we are going the direction now. Also next project, it is to make houses smaller. We do not need that much space. So it's free land. It's called free land. Does that mean anything in Danish? Yes, it is free. The free land, in English, it's F-R-E-E. Free land. And it means both that we are free, the human, but also nature. It is about to stop struggle against nature, but come into that you cooperate with nature and you are part of nature. It's how we think it. So just to think over, what are you doing? Because normally we just do like your neighbor, consuming. He has a big car. I also need a big car then. What is it? What are we thinking on? We have lost our time. Time for living. But also not to sit around. But we are not manpower. No, we are creators. We can create our own life. We can create, if we have the circumstances, you can do everything on the place where you are, together with your neighbor. We do not need everything from outside. No, it's here. And that's what we need to do. Save ourselves. Save your time. We have become so busy. We are so busy we have lost ourselves. We have lost connection. We are not grounding anymore. We are just thinking on what I need some more. You always need some more. What you need, it's here. Right around us. We should just cooperate with nature.