How to build according to the Building Energy Act or EH55 or EH40

Depends on how you define the life cycle. Should I do a study on how super expensive driving a car is or how CO2-unfriendly electric cars are... Then I have various options. I can set the lifespan of a passenger car at 150,000 km, during which the value of BLP drops to 0. That’s how ADAC did it until a few years ago, I don’t know the current calculation practice. I can calculate the electricity supply of the electric car purely with coal power and claim that the vehicles are mostly charged in the evenings, when there is no more photovoltaic power. I can include lithium production and landscape damage, but ignore that for combustion engines gasoline is not produced at the pump and oil extraction causes massive environmental damage in the producing countries.

In short: What I want to achieve, I can prove in a study by the choice of parameters.

Therefore. An EH40 will probably pay off over a lifespan of 100 years, maybe even after 50 years. Provided you don’t take out a loan at 4% with 1.5% repayment and the CO2 price develops as predicted from 2027 onwards.

But it doesn’t do me any good if I break even at the tender age of 80 or 90 and finally save money, so life can really begin ;) Even at the young age of 70 that would clearly be too late for me... and until then I would definitely pay a high rate if I had built EH40 instead of "just" GEG2020... which is already not a bad standard.

As long as you don’t have a loan at 4% with 1.5% repayment

I will make a different calculation here. Unfortunately, I am dependent on data or prices from the internet.

Annual maintenance of air heat pump according to Bosch €300
Operating costs of central ventilation system with heat recovery
€180 at €0.32 per kWh
Annual maintenance with filter €100
Cleaning every 4-8 years €400-800
Corresponds to €50-200/a
Assumption €100
That puts me already at maintenance/operating costs of €680/a
There is no circulation pump running yet and I have neither heated nor provided hot water.
At the end of the year, we then move somewhere near €1000, whereby not even 1/3 is needed for pure heating energy.
I would now like to compare this to a house from 2004 with insulation somewhat above the standard at that time U-value 0.33
Windows 1.3
Heating load 9kW
No ventilation system
Maintenance-free air heat pump
Of course, consumption is considerably higher.
We are currently at 1850kWh
In addition, maybe another 900/1000 kWh will come for October, November, and December.
Multiply that by €0.28 plus €90 meter rent.
Worst case would be €900
In 2022 it was €728.77 including meter rent.
No idea how EH40 is supposed to be calculated without 4% interest.

I see it similarly regarding maintenance costs. In newer houses, there are often many more technical devices/systems that did not exist to this extent in the past. Controlled residential ventilation, water softening, home automation in all variations, etc. It is obvious that all of this also costs money for maintenance and operation. However, we were aware of this during planning and accordingly budgeted for operating costs. We also knew from the outset that most of these comfort enhancers would never pay off. We have gained the impression that many people nowadays can no longer distinguish between comfort gain and genuine energy-saving measures, and think that a house with a particularly high energy efficiency standard is necessarily associated with lower operating costs than a house with a lower standard. But that is not always true. It depends on the details of all the installed components.

I see it similarly with the maintenance costs. In newer houses, there are often many more technical devices/systems that did not exist to this extent in the past. Controlled residential ventilation, water softening, home automation in all variations, etc. It’s logical that all this also costs money for maintenance and operation.

However, that has little to do with the question of the energy standard, especially in comparison between GEG2016 and EH40. I maintain: whoever puts numbers out there must also prove how they arrive at them. This applies even more when one believes they have disproven the accepted doctrine ("previously underestimated..."). Otherwise, it is merely a convenience expert opinion for someone.

Maintenance-free air heat pump

Crazy stories from the Paulanergarten, episode 23.

Crazy stories from the Paulanergarten, episode 23.

Well then I made a mistake.
The system was sold to me as a maintenance-free heat pump.
By the way, I also don't have my refrigerator serviced.
Certainly, we have had one or two problems, but that should be normal after almost 19 years.