monument

Dresden – Homeowners in Germany fear: Oil heating ban from next year? Compulsory renovations when your own four walls become an energy slingshot?

Holger Schubert (41) from Dresden wants to do everything right – before Habeck’s restructuring hammer takes hold. But he becomes a boomerang for him! Because the Saxon monument protection does not play along!

“I’m renovating a listed house from 1914, replacing the existing coal heating system with a modern heat pump, insulating the facade and roof and of course also wanting to replace the windows,” explains Schubert. But the latter forbids him the monument protection authority.

Schubert: “Out of ten windows in my house, I have to leave seven old ones in and refurbish them again. New, identical wooden lattice windows would insulate almost three times as well as the 109-year-old originals. With a single-glazed window from 1914 that I am supposed to keep, ten times as much heat is lost,” says the aircraft engineer, annoyed.

Building costs are exploding

The joke: Both his direct neighbor installed plastic windows in the house, which is also a listed building, without being asked. And the city of Dresden operates a day-care center with after-school care not far away in the listed former fire station. It also has new wooden lattice windows!

The monument protection office of the city of Dresden did not want to explain to BILD why this was the case.

The official madness comes the price hammer: four refurbished original windows alone cost him 16,500 euros, four new, optically identical only 7,600 euros. The construction costs for the house with 125 square meters have already climbed from 350,000 to 450,000 euros due to inflation and increased material and craftsman costs.

Nevertheless, Schubert affords an air heat pump for 45,000 euros for environmental protection (gas heating in comparison only 15,000 euros). Schubert fears: “The power consumption of the heat pump will increase enormously due to the poorer thermal insulation of the original windows.”

Wrote in desperation the native of Dresden sent a letter of protest to Saxon Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer (47, CDU) and his Environment Minister Wolfram Günther (49, Greens) – without success.

Last week also received now Federal Climate Protection Minister Robert Habeck (53, Greens) Mail from Schubert. He writes: “As a client, I would like to voluntarily carry out energy-related refurbishment, but unfortunately the authorities have forbidden me to do so. In a few years I will probably be legally obliged to do this – isn’t that schizophrenic?”