Hello and greetings to the community,
My girlfriend and I are considering building a house in the near future.
We already have a plot of land, so that issue is settled.
We have also decided on the type of house.
We want to avoid rising energy costs by building a passive house with solar panels on the roof.
Additionally, we definitely do not want wood as a building material but prefer traditional bricks or something similar.
In terms of design, we want something suitable for aging (i.e., accessible) and therefore a bungalow.
The dimensions for the house are already set: 15.50 meters (51 feet) wide and 11 meters (36 feet) long, which equals about 170.5 m² (1,835 sq ft).
Now to my questions:
- I have read a lot about passive houses online, and one site mentioned that it is almost impossible to build a bungalow as a passive house. Why is that?
- Are the costs for a bungalow cheaper or more expensive than for a two-story house?
- Is there a building material comparable in quality to brick?
- Is a passive house built with solid construction, i.e., bricks, significantly more expensive?
- Is there any way to get an approximate price estimate for our “dream house”?
Many thanks in advance
Regards
Hugh60
My girlfriend and I are considering building a house in the near future.
We already have a plot of land, so that issue is settled.
We have also decided on the type of house.
We want to avoid rising energy costs by building a passive house with solar panels on the roof.
Additionally, we definitely do not want wood as a building material but prefer traditional bricks or something similar.
In terms of design, we want something suitable for aging (i.e., accessible) and therefore a bungalow.
The dimensions for the house are already set: 15.50 meters (51 feet) wide and 11 meters (36 feet) long, which equals about 170.5 m² (1,835 sq ft).
Now to my questions:
- I have read a lot about passive houses online, and one site mentioned that it is almost impossible to build a bungalow as a passive house. Why is that?
- Are the costs for a bungalow cheaper or more expensive than for a two-story house?
- Is there a building material comparable in quality to brick?
- Is a passive house built with solid construction, i.e., bricks, significantly more expensive?
- Is there any way to get an approximate price estimate for our “dream house”?
Many thanks in advance
Regards
Hugh60
F
friedrich272 Dec 2013 08:42Well, since you asked me so nicely, here it is once more:
- Germany covers about 35 million hectares.
- Nearly one-third of this area is forested.
- We have a forest area of 11.1 million hectares.
- Our forest structure grows approximately 10 fm (fm corresponds to 1 m³) annually.
- The apparent wood shortage seems critical, yet we could significantly increase this growth with fast-growing tree species (e.g., Douglas fir), but instead, we do the opposite. For quite some time, beech has been preferred for reforestation, a very slow-growing wood species for which we currently have no meaningful large-scale use. As a result, about 70% of the beech wood harvested is burned. This is certainly a more sensible use than building houses with it.
- To build a single-family house entirely from wood (example: cross-laminated timber for walls, ceilings, roof, insulation made entirely of wood fiber, and weather protection also from wood components), we need about 130 m³ of wood material.
- I will incorrectly simplify by equating 1 m³ with 1 fm. This is inaccurate because sawn timber production does not achieve 100% yield, and 1 m³ of wood fiber insulation does not require 1 fm.
- This means we have an annual wood growth of 110 million fm. About 70% of this growth is harvested for wood use, so approximately 77 million fm per year are available in Germany. Thus, if all annual wood growth were used exclusively for houses (single- and two-family homes) built entirely from wood, we could build nearly 600,000 houses.
- Last year, however, there were only about 120,000 building permits issued. Around 15% of those were mainly wooden constructions, but the vast majority of these were timber frame buildings insulated with mineral wool or EPS. Naturally, the wood consumption for such houses is much lower than in my example.
Now I wonder, which wood use is more sensible than building high-quality, ecological houses from it?
I also wonder where the author gets the idea that the very important raw material wood is running out.
A small note:
Our forest areas are not shrinking but increasing year by year.
Not knowing something does no harm. But maybe it would be better to phrase this not as a statement but as a question. After all, there are no stupid questions.
Regards, Friedrich.
- Germany covers about 35 million hectares.
- Nearly one-third of this area is forested.
- We have a forest area of 11.1 million hectares.
- Our forest structure grows approximately 10 fm (fm corresponds to 1 m³) annually.
- The apparent wood shortage seems critical, yet we could significantly increase this growth with fast-growing tree species (e.g., Douglas fir), but instead, we do the opposite. For quite some time, beech has been preferred for reforestation, a very slow-growing wood species for which we currently have no meaningful large-scale use. As a result, about 70% of the beech wood harvested is burned. This is certainly a more sensible use than building houses with it.
- To build a single-family house entirely from wood (example: cross-laminated timber for walls, ceilings, roof, insulation made entirely of wood fiber, and weather protection also from wood components), we need about 130 m³ of wood material.
- I will incorrectly simplify by equating 1 m³ with 1 fm. This is inaccurate because sawn timber production does not achieve 100% yield, and 1 m³ of wood fiber insulation does not require 1 fm.
- This means we have an annual wood growth of 110 million fm. About 70% of this growth is harvested for wood use, so approximately 77 million fm per year are available in Germany. Thus, if all annual wood growth were used exclusively for houses (single- and two-family homes) built entirely from wood, we could build nearly 600,000 houses.
- Last year, however, there were only about 120,000 building permits issued. Around 15% of those were mainly wooden constructions, but the vast majority of these were timber frame buildings insulated with mineral wool or EPS. Naturally, the wood consumption for such houses is much lower than in my example.
Now I wonder, which wood use is more sensible than building high-quality, ecological houses from it?
I also wonder where the author gets the idea that the very important raw material wood is running out.
A small note:
Our forest areas are not shrinking but increasing year by year.
Not knowing something does no harm. But maybe it would be better to phrase this not as a statement but as a question. After all, there are no stupid questions.
Regards, Friedrich.
Similar topics