Termination of basement construction contract - experiences?

Buying a house and the basement separately is also not unusual. In the case of prefabricated houses, one generally does not commission a separate architect; that is all included in the scope of the basement. The house builder also charges €3000 for the additional expenses related to taking the basement into account.

Buying the basement separately is the point where I have the only crucial disagreement with the prefabricated house expert Tobias Beuler, who cites the possible price advantage as the reason for his opposing opinion here. I also worked as a managing commercial director and know that divided interface responsibilities often lead to court disputes (and in construction, nothing costs as much money as unplanned time spent). And also that hardly any difference is greater than between an architect who is only supposed to handle the paperwork for the house erector and one whom you feed and for whom you order the song. In a free country, every adult may use the privilege of the layman to behave naively clumsy—but does not have to ;-)—and naturally also is personally responsible for the consequences.

The house is absolutely correctly thermally separated from the basement. It is not unusual and also in accordance with the Energy Saving Ordinance to have the heating insulated in the basement.
The basement will receive a U-value under 0.35 according to the component proof for low-heated rooms (12 to 19 degrees). It is also perfectly fine to later install an infrared heater in the rarely used hobby basement or a surface heater connected to the air heat pump—this will then be technically clarified in due course.

Here, the house doesn’t need to be separated from the basement at all, since the basement represents a thermal envelope of equal quality. It complies with regulations to operate the heating in the insulated basement. You leave the scope of compliance at the point where you believe, without (which is hardly recommendable within a basement) separating the zones, that heating certain areas is your private matter. But it is only so in practice, not for the heating load calculation. The heating load calculation is mandatorily part of the requirements of a proper building application. And if, according to your private fantasy, a basement room is only heated on demand, then it will have to be practically assumed as a leak volume in the heating load calculation. But that destroys the calculation and makes the one providing the calculation look like a fool before the building authority. And for that, the following really applies:

Now, now, now, this is slowly becoming rather impolite!

Of course, you may give the house provider and the basement builder each an additional order to get a cow off the ice that no one but YOU YOURSELF put there. But keep in mind that they may also refuse this additional order (without consequences for their actual contracts) — and also the second gastronomic law.

Unfortunately, we are not getting along at all with our basement builder, and the relationship between him and our house builder is very poor. The basement builder constantly questions the competence of the house manufacturer, and understandably, they have been responding quite defensively in the meantime and are also refusing to do the basement execution planning for this manufacturer (who is actually a reputable company)... I fear, unfortunately, this will not end well.

We would now like to terminate the contract... Better an end with a fright than a fright without end. According to the contract, we would have to pay 8% in case of termination.

So far, the company has not done more for us than signing the contract and having phone calls and emails.

Does anyone have experience regarding this and maybe has even gone through something similar?

(Of course, I will still discuss the matter with our lawyer.)

Thank you very much

Thank you for all the comments. Now I would like to inform about the preliminary result: The basement builder and the house builder have complied with my request, and now the basement builder has agreed to do the execution planning (charged by the hour).

Thank you very much for all the comments. Now I would also like to inform you about the preliminary result: the basement builder and the house builder have complied with my request and now the basement builder has agreed to do the execution planning (billed by the hour).

Does the house builder, in return, credit the basement planning or was it never commissioned? Is there a "limit/amount/hours" that was set for the execution planning? If not, he now has a blank check in his hand on which he can write the amount he desires in the end.

Does the house builder, in return, approve the basement planning or was it never commissioned?
Is there a "limit/amount/hours" that were set for the execution planning? If not, he now has a blank check in his hand on which he can write the amount he wants for himself in the end.

We thought the execution planning was already part of the basement order. Yes, this is getting exciting now and we just hope for the honesty of the company.

You are paying for a service that was already included in the price again? Why?

To make any progress at all? Months of disputes will probably cost much more