6 ms·

I know you are just illustrating an opinion and not meaning it literally, but I want to stress how ridiculous your number of 100 years is in reality. The expec

I know you are just illustrating an opinion and not meaning it literally, but I want to stress how ridiculous your number of 100 years is in reality. The expected economic lifetime of a building in Germany is approximately 100 years. Which means that on average, the house will be torn down and rebuilt after at most 100 years, because additional upkeep would not make economic sense. This means that if you do not change policy except mandating modern standards for new buildings (which is already done) and do literally jack-shit, the normal economic activity will have the problem sorted out in that timespan. For reference: Of 22 million buildings in Germany, "only" 12.5 million are built before 1977. The German government aims at having pretty much all buildings energetically renovated in 2050. The biggest problem is that 1. there are many house-owners who literally do not give a shit even if they can save lots of money by an investment. Not everyone is economically minded and there is no political will (or legal basis) to force these people for their own good. And 2. for bigger apartment buildings etc. it is hard to do an invasive renovation while the units are occupied, limiting the scope of renovations to something that can be done in-place or one unit at a time or without affecting tenants.

illiac786 4y ago
>The expected economic lifetime of a building in Germany is approximately 100 years Source? Counter examples: my house is built 1908. Lots of other houses built around the same time in the area I live in. My parents live in a house from 1749. The entire village where they live is made of houses built 200+ years ago, it's written on the house in general, hence easy to check. Hence I very much stand by my prediction it will take 100 years to isolate the vast majority of houses in Europe. Of course it's just a prediction based on my observations, I'm not an expert in the area.
- thomashop 4y ago
  The person you responded to was talking about the whole of Germany. You're talking about one individual village. Your sample size is too small to make generalisations.
  - illiac786 4y ago
    What sample over whole Germany? There is no source, no sample, it’s a baseless statement.
- bogdanu 4y ago
  Europe is a big continent, even EU is so diverse. A lot of people in Eastern Europe live in apartments and houses that can be insulated extremely cheap. There are even EU or government programs that make it affordable.
  - dmitriid 4y ago
    It's not really "extremely cheap" and probably only refers to covering old buildings with external insulation. Most of the Soviet-era panel apartment blocks (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panel_building https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panel_building) have extremely shitty internal insulation, too. So you end up heating your neighbors, the street, the elevator shafts, stairwells etc. You can't really fix that without extremely costly renovations. Khrusschchyovkas (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khrushchyovka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khrushchyovka) are marginally better due to materials used, but they are 50 years past their demolition date by now, and will be also very expensive to retrofit. There is also an insane number of new construction in the past 30 years. Perhaps for the in-EU Eastern European countries regulations and standards work. Everywhere else it's "whatever we build, as cheaply as possible"
    - bogdanu 4y ago
      I think having some insulation is better than having none. But yeah, if you want to do it properly, it would cost a lot more. As for heating your neighbours, a lot of cities have city heating and is paid depending on how many people live in the apartment, so you don't care that much about it. Of course, some folks have gas boilers in their apartment (like me) but it won't make sense financially to insulate the inner walls. I think it's the same for new buildings here too, if not worse. A lot of regulations aren't actually respected and because a lot of builders left for WE, there's a huge problem with finding skilled workers.
- yayachiken 4y ago
  > Source? Assuming an economic lifetime of 70 to 100 years for new buildings is industry practice based on standards like DIN 276. You can find those numbers (with some variation) on pretty much every web page dealing with economics of building, for example here: https://www.bauprofessor.de/wirtschaftliche-nutzungsdauer-gebaeude/ https://www.bauprofessor.de/wirtschaftliche-nutzungsdauer-ge... You can also approximately extrapolate that number from the source I have given you. (Which is based on a survey by the federal government of Germany) If approximately 50-60% of houses are older than 50 years, then assuming a approximately linear to progressive attrition curve you will get a number around 100 for the average lifetime. Of course a long tail exists, but 1. I was talking about economic costs, people might just like their houses and renovate even though it is financially not worth it, and 2. after 100 years the historical protection (Denkmalschutz) gets more and more relevant and is a whole different set of regulations.
  - valenterry 4y ago
    I think you misunderstand what "economic lifetime" means here. It is mostly relevant for tax purposes. In other words: if you build a house for $X and live in it then for tax purposes it is assumed that (on average) after a 100 years you must have been spending $X for maintenance so that you can sell the building for $X. If you have spent more money, then you can't deduct that from tax (exceptions exist). Or in yet other words: if you don't spend anything for maintenance then after 100 years (on average) the building will be worth nothing, meaning that it will cost the same to rebuild it compared to fix it. But since most people maintan their buildings, i.e. fix the roof when it starts leaking, fix the doors and windows when they break or are not airtight anymore etc., buildings are much older than 100 years. 100 years is the _minimum_ time before it's even worth to rebuild on average.
    - yayachiken 4y ago
      These maintenance tasks are exactly what this discussion is about. You will do major work on roof or facades every 50 years or so. This is exactly the opportunity where you pretty much get insulation for free. After 100 years the house will have been all but structurally rebuilt once, just for upkeep reasons. You perform energetic renovations together with the upkeep tasks. And when the house is old enough, the monument protection agency will even force you to do it by that time.
- throwaway2037 4y ago
  Your parents house was built in 1749. Do they pay the equivalent carbon tax to own a house like this? Unless it has been hyper-modernized, but the exterior remains old/ancient, I struggle to understand or support your argument. More brutally: If you parents want to live in a house from 1749, should 1.5 billion people (probably more!) in South Asia be forced to live in unsustainable conditions (much high average annual temperatures) for the "history" of your parents' house? Absolutely not. In contrast, if you support massive gov't subsidies and personal taxes to pay for the upgrade of these homes to 21st century energy standards, then... sure, no problem, they can live in a home from 3000 BC!
  - illiac786 4y ago
    You missed my point. I was saying that 100 years max lifecycle for a house is wrong in my view.
onli 4y ago
> Not everyone is economically minded and there is no political will (or legal basis) to force these people for their own good. Not for their own good, but for the common good sure there is a legal basis. Eigentum verpflichtet. Same direction as mandating solar panels for roofs.
- yayachiken 4y ago
  What I mean with legal basis is that the laws do not exist yet. The constitution would allow these laws, even to the point of expropriation. But as long as the laws do not exist there is no legal basis to act on. In case of conflict, there are some court rulings already, for example the highest court recently ruled that you may infringe on the neighbors property, if you need to insulate your walls in such a way that the thicker walls would then be on the neighbours property.

illiac786 4y ago

>The expected economic lifetime of a building in Germany is approximately 100 years Source? Counter examples: my house is built 1908. Lots of other houses built around the same time in the area I live in. My parents live in a house from 1749. The entire village where they live is made of houses built 200+ years ago, it's written on the house in general, hence easy to check. Hence I very much stand by my prediction it will take 100 years to isolate the vast majority of houses in Europe. Of course it's just a prediction based on my observations, I'm not an expert in the area.

thomashop 4y ago
The person you responded to was talking about the whole of Germany. You're talking about one individual village. Your sample size is too small to make generalisations.
- illiac786 4y ago
  What sample over whole Germany? There is no source, no sample, it’s a baseless statement.
bogdanu 4y ago
Europe is a big continent, even EU is so diverse. A lot of people in Eastern Europe live in apartments and houses that can be insulated extremely cheap. There are even EU or government programs that make it affordable.
- dmitriid 4y ago
  It's not really "extremely cheap" and probably only refers to covering old buildings with external insulation. Most of the Soviet-era panel apartment blocks (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panel_building https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panel_building) have extremely shitty internal insulation, too. So you end up heating your neighbors, the street, the elevator shafts, stairwells etc. You can't really fix that without extremely costly renovations. Khrusschchyovkas (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khrushchyovka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khrushchyovka) are marginally better due to materials used, but they are 50 years past their demolition date by now, and will be also very expensive to retrofit. There is also an insane number of new construction in the past 30 years. Perhaps for the in-EU Eastern European countries regulations and standards work. Everywhere else it's "whatever we build, as cheaply as possible"
  - bogdanu 4y ago
    I think having some insulation is better than having none. But yeah, if you want to do it properly, it would cost a lot more. As for heating your neighbours, a lot of cities have city heating and is paid depending on how many people live in the apartment, so you don't care that much about it. Of course, some folks have gas boilers in their apartment (like me) but it won't make sense financially to insulate the inner walls. I think it's the same for new buildings here too, if not worse. A lot of regulations aren't actually respected and because a lot of builders left for WE, there's a huge problem with finding skilled workers.
yayachiken 4y ago
> Source? Assuming an economic lifetime of 70 to 100 years for new buildings is industry practice based on standards like DIN 276. You can find those numbers (with some variation) on pretty much every web page dealing with economics of building, for example here: https://www.bauprofessor.de/wirtschaftliche-nutzungsdauer-gebaeude/ https://www.bauprofessor.de/wirtschaftliche-nutzungsdauer-ge... You can also approximately extrapolate that number from the source I have given you. (Which is based on a survey by the federal government of Germany) If approximately 50-60% of houses are older than 50 years, then assuming a approximately linear to progressive attrition curve you will get a number around 100 for the average lifetime. Of course a long tail exists, but 1. I was talking about economic costs, people might just like their houses and renovate even though it is financially not worth it, and 2. after 100 years the historical protection (Denkmalschutz) gets more and more relevant and is a whole different set of regulations.
- valenterry 4y ago
  I think you misunderstand what "economic lifetime" means here. It is mostly relevant for tax purposes. In other words: if you build a house for $X and live in it then for tax purposes it is assumed that (on average) after a 100 years you must have been spending $X for maintenance so that you can sell the building for $X. If you have spent more money, then you can't deduct that from tax (exceptions exist). Or in yet other words: if you don't spend anything for maintenance then after 100 years (on average) the building will be worth nothing, meaning that it will cost the same to rebuild it compared to fix it. But since most people maintan their buildings, i.e. fix the roof when it starts leaking, fix the doors and windows when they break or are not airtight anymore etc., buildings are much older than 100 years. 100 years is the _minimum_ time before it's even worth to rebuild on average.
  - yayachiken 4y ago
    These maintenance tasks are exactly what this discussion is about. You will do major work on roof or facades every 50 years or so. This is exactly the opportunity where you pretty much get insulation for free. After 100 years the house will have been all but structurally rebuilt once, just for upkeep reasons. You perform energetic renovations together with the upkeep tasks. And when the house is old enough, the monument protection agency will even force you to do it by that time.
throwaway2037 4y ago
Your parents house was built in 1749. Do they pay the equivalent carbon tax to own a house like this? Unless it has been hyper-modernized, but the exterior remains old/ancient, I struggle to understand or support your argument. More brutally: If you parents want to live in a house from 1749, should 1.5 billion people (probably more!) in South Asia be forced to live in unsustainable conditions (much high average annual temperatures) for the "history" of your parents' house? Absolutely not. In contrast, if you support massive gov't subsidies and personal taxes to pay for the upgrade of these homes to 21st century energy standards, then... sure, no problem, they can live in a home from 3000 BC!
- illiac786 4y ago
  You missed my point. I was saying that 100 years max lifecycle for a house is wrong in my view.

onli 4y ago

> Not everyone is economically minded and there is no political will (or legal basis) to force these people for their own good. Not for their own good, but for the common good sure there is a legal basis. Eigentum verpflichtet. Same direction as mandating solar panels for roofs.

yayachiken 4y ago
What I mean with legal basis is that the laws do not exist yet. The constitution would allow these laws, even to the point of expropriation. But as long as the laws do not exist there is no legal basis to act on. In case of conflict, there are some court rulings already, for example the highest court recently ruled that you may infringe on the neighbors property, if you need to insulate your walls in such a way that the thicker walls would then be on the neighbours property.