ᐅ The city’s Passive House requirements are not included in the zoning plan (or development plan).

Rübe1 schrieb:

If you buy from the city of Ulm, please take a look at the sample purchase agreement. There is a contractual provision, especially § 2 No. 5.

Yep. Seen it. But where is the regulation about the passive house? I couldn’t find it. That’s actually the clause about district heating.

If the city provides the original poster with a different purchase agreement, other regulations could of course apply. But the purchase agreement also does not include a passive house requirement (in the sample purchase agreement).

wiltshire schrieb:

in addition to the development plan from the various municipal statutes.

By the way, the development plan is also a municipal statute 😉

Above all are the Building Code and the State Building Regulations. The development plan as a statute takes precedence regarding the type and extent of structural use, among other things.
In addition—neither superior nor subordinate—are municipal statutes such as design regulations, parking space regulations, and of course connection regulations. These are supplementary statutes.
For example: the development plan specifies what can be built—a single-family house, 2 full floors, floor area ratio X. In addition, the design regulations specify how the house should look—facade materials and color, roof pitch, and so on. And another supplementary statute—the parking space regulations—requires you to have two parking spaces.

It gets interesting when you have two statutes with conflicting requirements. But that is too specific...

However, that does not apply in Ulm. Hence my statement.

Mathis.aenni schrieb:

We are completely new here since we recently have the chance to buy a plot in a new development area. We have one of the five plots that cannot be connected to the local district heating network.

How nice that reality sometimes contradicts extreme environmentalism. In what way does this inability to connect manifest itself (legal jargon: "objective impossibility")?

Rübe1 schrieb:

Please take a look at the standard purchase contract. There is a contractual agreement, especially in § 2 clause 5. If the city now requires you to build a passive house because you cannot connect to the heating network, then you have a problem. In other words, either you build a passive house, or you don’t get the plot. However, only the city can answer this for you. Whether this would stand up in court is a totally different matter. But it could take so long for a decision that you might be old and gray by then...

Well, since time machines don’t exist yet, technically construction only happens after purchase. What does the contract say in case of non-fulfillment (setting aside the reason for a moment): rescission, penalty, ...?

Mathis.aenni schrieb:

When inquiring with various city departments to find the appropriate contact person, we encountered a lot of ignorance on this topic. When we finally located the planner responsible for the development, he gave us a very brief answer regarding the passive house requirement and referred us to a page within a 100-page PDF (IG Passive House Germany) listing the applicable requirements for our plots: Passive House Classic, heating demand of 15 kWh/m²a, and a maximum renewable primary energy use of 60 kWh/m²a. With this information, we obtained initial offers from several prefabricated house manufacturers, with many unable to meet this very low heating demand and thus unable to provide a concrete offer.

“Suitable” contact persons are only partially available at “various departments.” Regarding practical capability (factual ability to provide information), it might be necessary to be passed from one office to another like some kind of bureaucratic “permit” or “application” from Pontius to Pilate. The legal suitability of a contact person within an authority, however, is linked to their area of responsibility, which is defined in legal bases and organizational charts. Responsibilities are generally divided into higher and lower levels, maximally, but never overlapping or duplicated. The planner may be commissioned with the design, but is unlikely to have decision-making authority, nor can they be held legally accountable for decisions. It is also common that the municipal building department is responsible for notifications and preliminary reviews, while the actual decision on building permits lies with the county or district, which can overrule the local building department’s recommendations. The municipality, as seller of the plot, may be your contractual counterpart (and could potentially make things difficult during the building permit process) — but if the district has the final authority, it is much more effective to establish contact there.

From a legal perspective, two things should be examined: the inclination of the decision-maker regarding the building permit (a construction law specialist is best suited here) on one hand, and the enforceability or weaknesses of the passive house clause in the purchase contract (contract law specialist advisable) on the other. A law firm with expertise in both areas might be the best option.

There certainly are many providers of passive houses, although not every prefabricated house builder offers such concepts. Generally, passive houses are more common among timber constructions than masonry houses — what other reasons do you have for limiting your search to prefabricated houses? Who are the neighbors building with (both among these five plots and those connected to the district heating)?

By the way, I am personally not very comfortable with the terms “passive house” and “district heating” being combined. Also, it’s puzzling how political contradictions arise: on one hand, landlords are no longer allowed to sign a cable TV contract for all tenants together, but on the other, a municipality should dictate the heating energy consumers of an entire development. Instead, as free consumers, Mr. Meier could burn coal bought from Telekom and Mr. Müller use gas from Vodafone. There are developments that increasingly help me understand non- and protest voters :-(
Ho ho ho ho ho, ho ho ho ho ho ho ho. This dog really can’t talk!

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Thank you for your detailed explanation, 11ant. I cannot say why the FW connection is not possible for 5 properties (perhaps a miscalculation). A good point regarding the final decision being made by the district authority.

For me, the most important question remains: on which document or applicable law could the city base its refusal of a submitted building application on the grounds that limit values are not being met—values that are not referenced in any official city document or building planner materials (except for the PDF cited by the city planner)? In my opinion, such a "decisive" clause should be visible to everyone before purchasing the property (e.g., in the justification for the development plan) without needing to obtain this information laboriously from the only city contact who is aware of these limits. I am curious to see what expert lawyers will advise on this matter.

Mathis.aenni schrieb:

The most important question for me remains which document or applicable law the city could refer to in order to reject a submitted building application.

Ordinances.
Design (form, appearance…), energy (efficiency, photovoltaics…), climate protection, tree preservation, water (drinking water, wastewater, rainwater), waste, preservation, special use, noise…
All of these ordinances are publicly accessible. So you can review everything without having to contact anyone if you want to avoid speaking with anyone. It’s just that you won’t get it presented in an easy-to-understand format.

Our architect went to the district building authority with a very rough plan and discussed the design. They then said: This is possible, that is not, and for this you need a special permit. A preliminary informal review helps everyone involved. The building application is then forwarded to the various departments (see ordinances) to verify compliance. For the approval of the building application, we only had to build a significantly larger infiltration basin, because the local water authority raised concerns. I went to the head of that authority and had it explained to me. We agreed that he would not issue a rejection but only an additional condition for approval. That settled the matter. If you communicate reasonably and openly, you can get help. The people in the offices are 99% not enemies if you don’t make them so yourself.

@TE: what exactly does your purchase contract say? Both regarding district heating and passive house standards.