The eco-house: a house with a future
Dagmar Fritz-Kramer, head of the bio-house specialist Baufritz
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde: Your company specializes in wooden houses. Is it cracking in the frame?
Dagmar Fritz-Kramer: No. We check the wood so that neither the floorboards creak nor roof or walls.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde: You are a designer. Modern designers like concrete, steel and glass. What makes the raw material wood so attractive for you?
Dagmar Fritz-Kramer: I am also a family man and a mother, and I am interested in the next generations experiencing a beautiful nature. Wood is a healthy and environmentally friendly material. 90% of our wood comes from controlled German forestry. Only the wood for the exterior facade is sourced from Finland. Because it comes from trees that grow slowly and are of very high quality. That guarantees durability for centuries. We also rely on healthy living materials such as loam, straw or glass in interior design.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde: "Wohngesund" sounds like a log cabin, your designs speak a different language: a house in which the inner walls can be moved, or a convertible, whose glass roof can be opened. How does it fit together?
Dagmar Fritz-Kramer: When I took over the management of the company, we actually fought against our eco-slippers image. Meanwhile, we have brought ecological living from this corner. We developed houses with slim profiles, streamlined formwork and new light sources.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde: When your father set out on the wrong path 30 years ago, hardly anyone thought about healthy building.
Dagmar Fritz-Kramer: The illness of my mother brought us on this course. The doctors did not rule out that the chemical wood preservatives in our house were responsible for their breast cancer. At that time, my father began to banish all materials from production that are harmful to man and nature. In a self-experiment, we then moved into the first ecological wholefood house, including a clarification pond and composting toilet. My friends were quite astonished: "How - you have a toilet in which you have to throw hay?"
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde: You offer to take back your houses. Does that mean I can give you the keys if I make a mistake?
Dagmar Fritz-Kramer: This refers to the return of the house after 100 or more years. When children inherit their parents' property, they may have very different housing needs. Then we pick up the house. We do not have disposal problems: all materials are recyclable. The disposal of conventional houses, however, is still a huge problem: Today, building rubble makes up 80 percent of hazardous waste.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde: Is your carefree package affordable?
Dagmar Fritz-Kramer: Organic houses are like organic apples: on average, customers pay 10 to 15 percent more than for conventional goods.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde: Can these additional costs be offset by energy-saving measures?
Dagmar Fritz-Kramer: The sun sends no bill: With solar or photovoltaic systems, you can reduce your running costs considerably.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde: How do you imagine the Biohaus of the future?
Dagmar Fritz-Kramer: Today is still built like 100 years ago - the houses in Germany are as stupid as then. The next-generation homes will be much smarter: walls provide light, ceilings cool in summer, seating will heat up, and there will be roof tiles with integrated solar energy.
Info: These houses are made environmentally friendly
1 SmartHouse. 2 Passive House by Carsten Grobe. 3 Passive house of architecture building biology. 4 Wohlfühlholzhaus of Baufritz
The passive house A conventional Heizverteilsystem is usually superfluous here. The house heats and cools simply passively and thereby saves energy and additional costs: www.passivhaus.de www.mueller-perkuhn.de
The SmartHouse is a mobile prefabricated house, which is individually expandable. Six different versions are available, which, with their high functionality and energy efficiency, only marginally pollute the environment while offering full living comfort: www.thesmarthouse.de
The feel-good house made of wood stores up to 40 tonnes of CO2 and thus contributes to the improvement of the climate. In addition, construction is carried out with low-emission and environmentally friendly materials: www.baufritz.de
Building and renovation: How to get funding
The good news: there are grants. The problem: There are currently around 900 funding programs from the EU, federal government, federal states, municipalities or municipal utilities, with different criteria and prerequisites.
A first orientation is the BINE Information Service (funded by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology) www.energiefoerderung.info
The largest sponsor is the state-owned KfW Bank, which awards favorable and long-term loans and subsidies: Information on Tel. 01 80/133 55 77. www.kfw-foerderbank.de
An individual and yet inexpensive advice to save energy in the home, who builds or renovates environmentally friendly, can get financial help. We say, where good advice about building houses for heating or heat insulation can be found at the consumer centers. Under the nationwide service number 090 01/363 74 43 (14 cents / minute) you can make an appointment for a personal consultation. Cost: five euros. Information at www.verbraucherzentrale-energieberatung.de
Who with a state-approved "on-site energy consultant" go through the house, find a list of all Germany-wide approved experts at www.bafa.de (Federal Office of Economics and Export Control). For the detailed energy consultation you can again take advantage of government subsidies.
