Full landfills, time-consuming disposal: that's how expensive it is to demolish a house

display

Building is expensive.

Many house builders and apartment buyers are increasingly reaching their financial limits in order to keep up with rising prices.

What many do not know, however, is that it is not just the building itself that is driving prices up.

It is also increasingly the exact opposite - mining.

Demolition, removal and disposal have become such a complex business that you can get almost half a prefabricated house for the cost.

Redensification in cities, the replacement of commercial buildings and the reconstruction of infrastructure often mean that old buildings have to be removed.

At the same time, the requirements for disposal are increasing.

Landfill capacities are becoming increasingly scarce in Germany

display

Now associations in the construction industry are warning of a further rise in prices, because the Federal Council has launched a new cover ordinance that pushes the claims up again.

The proposed regulation will "lead to more landfilling and make building unnecessarily expensive", warns Dieter Babiel, General Manager of the Main Association of the German Construction Industry (HDB).

The background to this is a problem that is not new to the professional world, but which is seldom noticed by the general public: In Germany, landfill capacities are becoming increasingly scarce, so that the costs for the disposal of excavated soil and demolition material are continuously increasing.

This in turn affects the construction costs and ultimately drives up the prices and rents of living space.

display

An internal survey carried out by the Central Association of the German Building Industry (ZDB) in June 2020 shows how big the challenge is.

According to the surveyed companies, the disposal situation has worsened over the past few years.

The fact that the distances to the landfill become longer, the more heavily the excavated soil is polluted, has a particularly massive effect.

When it comes to excavation of material class II - that is soil material that is so contaminated that it is only permitted to be recycled to a limited extent - every fifth construction company surveyed has to cover a distance of over 100 kilometers to the landfill.

Which not only leads to a significant increase in CO2 emissions.

From the perspective of the waste disposal company, a few tons of complicated soil are as valuable as precious stones.

And rubble made from mixed materials that are glued together now costs three-digit amounts per cubic meter to dispose of.

display

For a single-family home that replaces an existing building, this can add up to 30,000 euros - or more.

"The demolition and disposal costs have increased significantly in recent years," confirms Jean-Pascal Prick, who is responsible for finances at the Berlin DKW group.

"More and more often the question arises as to where demolition materials and excavated earth can be transported to," says Prick, whose company builds and renovates residential and commercial properties.

Palmer calls for end of family privilege for owners

Tübingen's Lord Mayor Boris Palmer (Greens) does not go far enough with the federal government's new building law.

He is bothered by the fact that, even after the reform, he cannot implement the municipal building law, with which a municipality can force its citizens to build, as desired.

Source: WORLD / Laura Fritsch

The magnitude of this is illustrated by the example of a project in the Berlin district of Charlottenburg, in which the DKW Group demolished a residential building and replaced it with a new building: Prick estimates the increase in disposal costs since 2017 at around 20 percent.

Properties in boom regions usually have a similarly high share of costs.

"The demolition and disposal costs," the expert concluded, "contribute significantly to high rents and purchase prices in inner-city construction projects."

Joachim Schmidt-Mertens, managing director of the Hamburg real estate company Becken Development, has another example.

This new building - in this case an office building called “Neo Büro am Ku'damm” - is also taking shape.

Here, says Schmidt-Mertens, "the additional disposal costs resulted in an increase in project costs of around five percent".

According to him, the costs for disposal alone are 70 to 100 percent higher than five to seven years ago.

display

However, according to the Becken manager, not all new buildings are equally affected by the increase in costs.

On average, he puts the increase in total construction costs, which are justified by the disposal, at one to five percent.

Other experts do not consider the topic to be quite as explosive.

"The disposal costs are rising, but are largely calculable for us," says Christoph Stöhr, managing director of Cologne-based Pandion Projektmanagement GmbH, which is building new residential and office buildings.

"Even if the landfill space is becoming increasingly scarce, this problem - at least in relation to our activity - does not lead to an explosion in construction costs."

Housing companies and project developers are trying to adapt their plans.

Prick from the DKW Group gives an example of this.

“Because of the soil problem, many project developers avoid going into depth,” he explains.

"Underground garages are an enormous cost driver."

In order not to experience any nasty surprises, his company always carries out a soil test before purchasing a property.

"Inexperienced project developers," reports Prick, "have often had to recalculate because they underestimated the costs of disposing of contaminated soil."

Recycling is included in the planning for construction projects

The company Becken Development is also reacting to the landfill situation.

“In order to support the circular economy of the materials used and thus to keep the amount of building rubble and excavated soil as low as possible, we plan to reuse them in our construction projects directly on site,” says Schmidt-Mertens.

In other words: dig the soil to the side, and then plug the next holes with it.

In addition, it is important to think about the recyclability of materials from the start, says Schmidt-Mertens.

"If concrete walls are not plastered - which is currently quite modern - they do not have any contamination from plaster or other coatings," he gives an example.

With metal facades, according to the expert, care should be taken that the coatings and seals do not stand in the way of later recycling.

display

Now it gets more complicated.

For almost 15 years, experts worked on a so-called shell regulation.

It brings together several ordinances that define nationwide requirements for the production and installation of mineral substitute building materials - i.e. recycling material.

On November 6, 2020, the Federal Council approved the shell ordinance with changes; the Cabinet and Bundestag have yet to follow.

While the Shell Ordinance is supposed to officially promote recycling, the construction and real estate industries fear the exact opposite: There is a risk of "massive restrictions on recycling options and thus a further shift in the flow of several million tons of material to landfills," according to the Federation of German Industries (BDI).

The Main Association of the German Construction Industry also anticipated a decline in the recycling rate and an increase in landfill in the run-up to the Federal Council decision.

In fact, the version adopted by the Federal Council means a tightening of the draft submitted by the Federal Cabinet.

For example, it prevents the recycling of some highly polluted waste and formulates additional requirements for the installation of mineral waste in technical structures and backfills.

The federal states that submitted the relevant application justify this by stating that “demanding standards for soil and groundwater protection must be taken into account”.

display

In the Federal Environment Ministry, the consequences of the Shell Ordinance are assessed as less dramatic.

A spokesman referred to a simulation game carried out in 2017, according to which the so-called material flow shift - i.e. the transport into landfills of materials that were previously used for road construction, for example - should amount to a maximum of 13 million tons per year.

The main association of the German construction industry expects significantly higher quantities.

According to his information, around 215 million tons of mineral construction waste are currently generated in Germany each year, almost 90 percent of which is recycled.

Should this rate fall, more problematic demolition materials would have to be landfilled.

Fabian Viehrig from the housing industry umbrella organization GdW shares this assessment.

He fears “that the requirements for recycled building materials will be further increased by the shell regulation.

This reduces the recycling rate and increases the pressure on landfills.

Because fewer and fewer landfill capacities are available at the same time, the disposal costs increase. "

And that would really be a nonsensical result.

Because as Florian Pronold, Parliamentary State Secretary in the Federal Environment Ministry, said last year in the Bundestag: He wanted to point out, “that we do not assume - that is not our goal - that the cover ordinance will lead to more landfilling;

rather, we want to get more re-use ”.

Here you can listen to our WELT podcasts

We use the player from the provider Podigee for our WELT podcasts.

We need your consent so that you can see the podcast player and to interact with or display content from Podigee and other social networks.

Activate social networks

I consent to content from social networks being displayed to me.

This allows personal data to be transmitted to third party providers.

This may require the storage of cookies on your device.

More information can be found here.