Building it here should be fine because of how small it is, would almost certainly be seen as a temporary structure and classed as similar to a garden shed. The problem is you cannot legally live in something like that.

Health code isn't likely to be an issue in the UK as I don't think we have anything overly strict that would matter. Environmental health exists but that is more of a concern if you are leaving a pile of waste that is attracting rats to the extent its causing a problem to other people. Been to events that use a shit pit before. Some you shit straight into the pit and others collect it into a septic tank and dump that into a pit later while marking a fence post near the pit to avoid digging in the same location next year. Does make me wonder how long it takes to rot down, 100-200 peoples shit from a whole weekend dumped into a pit and buried.

Then again maybe it isn't allowed and we were just doing it anyway.

[–] jaybone@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I still kind of think in most places in the US, this might not be illegal. (Someone else brought up HOAs, but that’s kind of a different story.) But now I’m curious and hoping someone who knows better can weigh in.

[–] SwingingTheLamp@midwest.social 1 points 2 days ago

Definitely illegal in the parts of Wisconsin I'm from. Zoning codes generally include a list of permitted uses for each zone, a list of conditional uses that need approval from the local zoning board or officer, and everything else is not allowed. If this structure were classified as a permanent structure, it would not meet building codes anywhere. If not a permanent structure, staying in it would be considered camping, which is not a permitted or conditional use in the zones of the county where I live. (Or maybe it is somehow; I just glanced over the ordinance.) I do have a bit of land in a county that does allow camping in certain zones, but for a maximum of 10 nights per year.

It seems to me that there's this pervasive sense that the landscape and lifestyles (cars, single-family houses, lawns, etc.) in the United States are what they are because that's what its citizens want for themselves. The reality is that just about anything else is illegal. Remember, the United States is the country that invented loitering (a.k.a. existing in public without a specific objective) as an offense in order to force (mostly Black) people into working degrading jobs. This is actually the kind of dwelling that Cornish miners built when they came to Wisconsin to mine galena. They got the nickname of "badgers" for it, and that's why we're the Badger State (and not due to the animal). So it's not like this is a new idea that nobody has thought of before, we just can't do it anymore.