[RedDevil]

Originally Posted by sendler

Do you have any links or any more information on the design of these houses? How many days below 0C do you have each year? No need to sink a geothermal well for each home?

I don't want to hijack the thread (more that now already) so I'll keep it short not overly long:
This is the project: https://www.bnw.ballast-nedam.nl/pro...in-helsdingen/. It has 95 free standing units (i thought there were more) and there are 3 variants, by energy level (Energy Performance Coefficient, the average energy efficiency, primarily heat retaining, of houses built in 1990).
Part complies to EPC 0.4 (the legal mandatory limit), part EPC 0 (self sufficient for heating), part climate neutral: '0 on the meter' (no net energy consumption whatsoever). Not all are climate neutral though, but then none take much to keep warm.

8 cm of walled foam insulation is enough for EPC 0.4, but I saw the builders stack and glue the big foam blocks in a bricklike way around the corners; those must have been at least 20 cm thick. Add to that a concrete inner house and brick outer skin, that makes the windows look like tunnels.

I saw them mount small window frames with heavy equipment. Must be either triple layer or thick double layer glass with special coating...

Building like that adds to the cost, but we are a densely populated country with soggy ground and high ground prices.
In the west the ground prices often exceed building cost even though the foundation often consists of 2 rows of reinforced concrete poles 20-30 meter deep into the ground. So as new houses have deep sunken costs it makes little sense to build them poorly; they'd still be expensive.