Some projects start with a piece of land.
Others start with a constraint.
This one starts with a detached house in a residential neighbourhood in Carinthia.
The house currently has approximately 110 m² of living space. The plan is to expand it to around 180 m², add a double carport and create a small 2.5 by 4 metre training pool with an integrated jacuzzi function.
The total plot is approximately 790 m².
There is currently no known independent water source on the property.
There are no hectares of productive land.
There is no plan to turn the property into a rental business.
And that is exactly what makes the project interesting.
Because the question is no longer how to build a homestead when space and resources are abundant.
The question is:
How much independence can you create within the boundaries of an ordinary home?
Self-sufficiency without leaving modern life
The traditional image of self-sufficiency is easy to recognise.
A large piece of land. A vegetable garden. Animals. Water. Solar panels. Perhaps a forest somewhere behind the house.
But that is not how most people live.
Most homes exist within neighbourhoods, connected to electricity, water, roads, shops and other infrastructure.
This house will be no different.
The objective is not to disconnect from those systems.
It is to investigate how much dependency can be reduced while keeping the comfort and advantages of modern living.
That creates a very different project.
Not off-grid.
Not survival.
Not a romantic attempt to escape society.
A normal home designed to need less from the systems around it.
790 m² changes the rules
Space becomes interesting when there is not enough of it to waste.
Once the house has been expanded, the double carport built, the driveway retained and the pool added, considerably less than 790 m² remains as usable outdoor space.
That forces choices.
A large lawn may look attractive, but produces very little.
A fruit tree can provide shade and food at the same time.
A hedge can create privacy while also supporting insects, birds or even producing berries.
A carport can protect cars, but its roof can potentially produce electricity.
The roof of the house can keep the weather out, but it can also collect rainwater and capture solar energy.
A swimming pool consumes space and energy, but a compact training pool can provide exercise and relaxation on roughly ten square metres.
Suddenly the question changes.
It is no longer:
How much land do we have?
It becomes:
How many functions can every part of the property perform?
The south-facing advantage
The property has one major asset.
Sun.
A south-facing plot creates possibilities that go far beyond having a sunny terrace.
It influences the energy potential of the house, where food can be grown, how outdoor spaces are positioned and how the future extension should interact with the garden.
But sunlight also creates a design problem.
More sun can mean more solar production, but also more heat inside the house during summer.
A successful design therefore needs to work with the seasons rather than simply maximise exposure.
Winter sun can be valuable.
Summer sun sometimes needs to be blocked.
Trees, roof overhangs, external shading and planting can become part of the climate system of the house.
The garden and the building stop being separate projects.
The house comes first
The biggest intervention will not happen in the garden.
It will happen to the house itself.
Expanding from approximately 110 m² to around 180 m² creates an opportunity to reconsider how the building works as a whole.
Insulation.
Heating.
Cooling.
Orientation.
Windows.
Solar production.
Energy storage.
Hot water.
Smart energy management.
These decisions are interconnected.
Adding solar panels is relatively easy.
Designing a home that requires less energy in the first place is more interesting.
The same applies to a home battery.
A battery can store electricity, but it cannot correct every inefficiency in a house.
The real objective is therefore not to collect as much technology as possible.
It is to build a system in which technology has less work to do.
That is also why the home battery question becomes part of this project rather than a separate technical decision.
Can a normal garden produce meaningful food?
This may be one of the most interesting experiments.
After construction, there will not be enough space for traditional small-scale farming.
But perhaps that is the wrong benchmark.
Food production does not necessarily require turning the entire garden into rows of vegetables.
A relatively small productive zone could combine raised beds, herbs, berries and a compact greenhouse.
Fruit trees can provide food without occupying the same space as a conventional vegetable garden.
Espalier fruit can use boundaries vertically.
Grapes and climbing plants can turn walls or structures into productive surfaces.
A greenhouse of only a few square metres could extend the growing season and make high-value crops such as tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers much more practical.
The ambition is not to produce every calorie consumed by the household.
That would make little sense here.
The more interesting question is:
How much useful food can be produced without allowing food production to take over the garden?
Water without assuming a natural source
The property is currently connected to the public water system.
There is currently no known independent water source on the property.
That does not mean water cannot become part of the independence strategy.
The expanded house and double carport will create a substantial combined roof area. Every rainfall that lands on those surfaces is also a resource.
Rainwater could potentially be collected and stored for garden irrigation and other suitable uses.
The garden itself can retain more water through planting, healthy soil, shade and reduced unnecessary evaporation.
On some properties in Austria, a natural spring, known locally as a Quelle, can create completely different possibilities for an independent water supply.
But that depends entirely on the land and local geology. A Quelle is a natural feature of a property and not something that can simply be created anywhere.
The question for this property is therefore how intelligently we can use and manage the water that is actually available.
The carport can become a power station
A double carport sounds like infrastructure for two cars.
It does not have to stop there.
Its roof represents additional surface area exposed to the sun.
That creates the possibility of treating the carport as part of the property's energy architecture.
Solar generation could potentially be distributed across the main house, extension and carport depending on orientation, shading and technical feasibility.
An electric vehicle could eventually become another component within that system.
A home battery could store part of the electricity produced during the day.
A heat pump could use electricity to provide heating and hot water.
Smart controls could decide when certain loads are most efficiently used.
The interesting part is not any individual technology.
It is what happens when they begin working together.
And yes, there will be a pool
Self-sufficiency can easily become ideological.
If something consumes energy or water, it can suddenly be labelled unnecessary.
I am not interested in building that kind of project.
The plan includes a small training pool of approximately 2.5 by 4 metres with a jacuzzi function.
It is deliberately compact.
It provides exercise, recovery and enjoyment without allowing a large swimming pool to dominate the garden.
And it creates another challenge.
Can comfort be designed intelligently rather than simply eliminated?
How should the water be heated?
How much energy will it use?
Can solar production help offset that consumption?
How should it be covered and insulated?
Could the pool itself become part of the broader energy thinking around the property?
The objective is not minimum consumption at any cost.
The objective is maximum value from the resources we choose to use.
A productive garden that still looks like a garden
There is another constraint.
I do not want to live in an agricultural experiment.
I want to live in a beautiful home.
That means the productive elements of the property need to become part of the landscape rather than compete with it.
Fruit trees can create structure.
Berry bushes can become boundaries.
Herbs can grow close to the kitchen.
Flowers can support pollinators.
Composting can disappear into a functional corner.
Rainwater storage can be largely invisible.
Raised beds can be architectural rather than improvised.
A small greenhouse can become part of the design.
The result should still feel like a garden.
Just one that works harder.
The 100 percent question
Could this house ever become completely self-sufficient?
Probably not.
And that is not the goal.
There will still be a water connection.
There will still be an electricity grid.
There will still be supermarkets, tradespeople, roads, internet connections and all the other systems that make modern life possible.
The interesting number is therefore not 100 percent.
The interesting question is where independence actually creates value.
Producing some electricity locally may make sense.
Storing some of it may make sense.
Growing some food may make sense.
Collecting rainwater may make sense.
Reducing heating demand almost certainly makes sense.
Trying to reproduce every service of modern society within 790 m² probably does not.
Self-sufficiency becomes more interesting when you stop treating it as an absolute.
A different kind of homestead
Perhaps this should not be called a homestead at all.
There are no hectares of land.
There is no ambition to disappear into the mountains and live outside the system.
It is a detached house in a residential neighbourhood in Carinthia.
That also makes the wider question of living in Carinthia part of the project, because independence is shaped by the place around the property as much as the property itself.
And perhaps that makes it a more relevant experiment.
Because if ideas such as local energy production, food growing, rainwater collection, efficient building design and greater resilience only work on large rural properties, they will remain niche.
The real challenge is bringing those ideas into ordinary residential life.
On limited land.
With neighbours.
With building regulations.
With a driveway.
With a carport.
With a swimming pool.
And with all the compromises that come with wanting both independence and comfort.
The project starts with one question
Over the coming years, this property will change.
The house will grow from approximately 110 m² towards 180 m².
The garden will change with it.
Some ideas will work.
Others probably will not.
Some technologies may prove worthwhile.
Others may turn out to be expensive answers to problems that could have been solved more simply.
That is exactly why I want to document it.
Not as a finished example of sustainable living.
Not as a blueprint everyone should copy.
But as a real experiment in what happens when you take an ordinary residential property and start asking more of it.
More energy produced locally.
More intelligent use of water.
More food from limited space.
More thought about what the house consumes.
More resilience when external systems become expensive or uncertain.
And, ultimately, more control over how the property supports the life inside it.
So the question is not whether 790 m² is enough to build a homestead.
The question is how much independence 790 m² can actually buy you.