It’s gray on this Saturday at the end of January. Not a ray of sunshine penetrates through the cloud cover – which is why the liveliness of the timber-clad facade of a mid-terrace house on Veldener Straße in Pasing only has a limited effect. The play of light and shadow is missing for the effect. But that doesn’t detract from Natalie Neuhausen’s enthusiasm. The architect and energy consultant from the Department for Health and Environment took 15 homeowners from the Austrian Quarter to the house of the Kreienbrink family this afternoon – to show how successful and at the same time charming an energy-efficient refurbishment in their quarter can look.
“Note the beautiful transitions,” says Neuhausen, pointing to a piece of corrugated iron that protrudes about 20 centimeters from the ground. The metal clads an insulating panel that wraps around the base area. “It’s important to go down at least a meter with something like that, because the cold also pulls into the basement.”
The Österreicherviertel, a settlement located between Attersee-, Agnes-Bernauer-, Willibald- and Landsberger Straße with mostly terraced and single-family houses from the 1950s and 1960s, has been a model project for several months. Using this district as an example, the city wants to test how it can succeed in making settlements fit for the future. Munich is to become climate-neutral by 2035. In order to achieve this goal, the city is relying on the transformative power in the quarter.
Julia and Holger Kreienbrink bought their house a few years ago as a hobbyist object. First they took care of the interior design. New electrics, new bathrooms, a gas instead of the previous oil heating. Then in 2015 the roof renovation. “The roof had no insulation, there was only a thin panel in it,” the owner recalls. So: have a protective layer of mineral wool installed, new bricks on top. In 2017 there were new wood-aluminium windows, triple glazed. “The window installation took a day, it went pretty quickly,” says Holger Kreienbrink to the visitors.
And finally the facade. The homeowners lent a hand themselves, spoke to a professional, and opted for a tongue and groove system made of glazed Siberian larch over an insulating rock wool insulation layer. Cost of the entire campaign: around 200,000 euros. 10,000 euros for the facade. Was it worth the effort? “Since the renovation, we’ve had about 30 percent less gas consumption than before,” reports the landlord.
Last year, the couple went one step further and had ten photovoltaic modules installed on the south-facing roof for around 15,000 euros, with a total annual electricity yield of around 4,000 kilowatt hours. There may be more solar cells on the north side, which would provide an additional 2500 kilowatt hours.
The small house in the Austrian Quarter is an example of successful energy-efficient renovation.
(Photo: Robert Haas)
That’s how Kreienbrinks energy consultant Peter Zitzelsberger explained it, who has been advising interested parties with ten other colleagues in the around 780 single- and two-family houses in the district since mid-November. The first impulse consultations, now 250 in number, are at the expense of the city. “This outreach energy consultation in the neighborhood is such a huge success that it even got us into the Climate Alliance’s annual report,” reports Project Manager Neuhausen.
The process of the one to one and a half hour initial consultation is always the same: First, Zitzelsberger and his colleagues create a mini profile for the building with the help of the homeowner – including consumption figures for water, electricity and heating. Then they explain everything that could be done to improve the energy balance: insulating the roof and facade, replacing windows, installing a new heating system. And the possibility of generating energy in the building yourself. “I usually pick a focus and show the customer what funding options are available,” says Zitzelsberger. Photovoltaics are in particularly high demand.
If the owners then decide to take action, step two follows: writing an energy report with recommendations. Customers have to pay for this so-called energetic refurbishment report themselves, but 90 percent of the costs are subsidized by the city – up to a maximum of 2300 euros. In addition, the municipality supports all measures listed in the report that are implemented with the help of federal funding with a further 15 percent.
The commitment of the residents of the Österreicherviertel proves how important it is “not to go over the city with a watering can” if you want to reach people, says project manager Neuhausen. There is now a group there that is thinking about mobility. Others are concerned with greenery and biodiversity. A working group focuses on district heating and would like to know whether it would make sense to set up a local heating network using groundwater in the district. The district has not yet been connected to the district heating network. “We are now doing a feasibility study,” says Neuhausen.
From January 24th to February 3rd there was also an information and entertainment program on site under the motto Re-Think to get even more residents on board – the walk to Kreienbrinks also took place in this context. In any case, Neuhausen has learned a lot in the past few months. For example, that networkers and platforms are needed to find like-minded people. And that the consultations should also be carried out for whole groups in the future, because the topics are similar anyway “and we can no longer afford the individual information”.
The architect knows that politicians “would like to have 20 quarters at the same time”. “But we have to do that first.” In a few weeks, Zitzelsberger and his ten energy consultant colleagues will be moving to a new quarter with the same problems, taking the Austrian Quarter with them as a blueprint. Your destination this time: Sendling-Westpark. Between the Mittlerer Ring, Westpark, Fürstenrieder Strasse and the Garmisch Autobahn.