Sustainability can also be fun, Carsten knows. That's because he has installed many gimmicks in his ecological house that make it very easy and convenient to live in an environmentally conscious way.
Carsten has lived with his wife and two children in the modern timber frame house for 13 years. His company is also housed under the same roof. The house was built as part of a joint building venture. The city of Tübingen had purchased the former motor sports site and offered it at a fair neighborhood price for the best concept. Carsten had applied with his concept and was awarded the contract by the city. "I'm glad we built it 13 years ago, with the prices nowadays we couldn't afford it at all, the way construction costs have exploded."
The house was up in five days, as almost all of the pieces were prefabricated at a local carpentry shop and then quickly assembled with two cranes. Even during construction, Carsten made sure to use natural insulating materials in floor and wall insulation: Cellulose, wood fiber, coir.
The exterior of the house is not sealed. Access paths are largely made of regional rough sandstone with split joint filling. Garden areas are divided into lawns and planting fruit trees and shrubs.
Throughout the house, Carsten has hidden small and big ideas to keep energy and resource consumption as low as possible. The wooden construction allowed him to install a bus system in the house that was new for the time. This allows him to program and control each outlet individually. Batteries and power supplies are powered for a limited maximum of two hours, so no idle power is consumed. The lights in the stairwell turn off automatically after 15 minutes. And it can also turn off all the lights on a floor at once with just the push of a button.
But Carsten has also integrated ideas that are simply convenient into his house. For example, he had a pipe system for dirty laundry installed on each floor during the planning stage, which transports the laundry directly to the washing machine in the basement. In the kitchen, there is another pipe system for garbage so that it slides directly into the bins in the basement separately. Waste separation that is simply fun. A central vacuum cleaner, for which there is a wall connection in each room, directs the sucked-in air directly outside for healthier indoor air.
The family uses domestic water to flush the toilets, and the washing machine uses water from the rainwater cistern for the first wash cycle. The cooling system in the company's server room is also ingenious: thanks to the permanent supply of fresh air, which is heated by the equipment and then discharged again, the room requires almost no air conditioning and the waste heat can even be used elsewhere for heating. On the roof there is a photovoltaic system and also a solar system, for electricity and hot water. Their costs have long since been amortized in the 13 years.
Throughout the house, you can sense that the topic of climate protection is close to Carsten's heart.
A film by Julius Schmitt (editor), Enno Endlicher (camera), Feline Gerhardt (camera) and Cécilia Marchat (sound). Production: EIKON Media GmbH, on behalf of SWR.
00:00 Ecological timber construction
00:31 Living and dining area
04:22 Bathroom
06:02 Bedroom
07:26 Terrace
08:40 Roof
09:50 Commercial area
2 авг 2024
