A house – since June/July 2014 we (Irina Merz and me) live in a small house in the Northwestern part of Halle – beyond a forest in a village („Dörfler“ und „Hinterwäldler“) but with good connection to the city by bus and tram.

The house is rather old, it was built in 1910. It was said to be the poorhouse of the Protestant Church of the village. After WorldWar II in the 1950ies and 1960ies, about 10 people lived in the house: 2 families with children and old couples. In the 1980ies it was sold by the Church and after reunification to a private person. In 1995 it was completely reconstructed. After beeing sold again in the beginning 2000s it was for rent several years. In Dec 2013 I bought the house and after another renovation Irina and me were moving in in Jun – Aug 2014. In Nov 2015 the heating and energy supply was completely reconstructed. Since then we produce more energy than we need over the year for household and heating. Additionally the windows were newly made, we inserted a cistern and the carport has to be reconstructed – with additional photovoltaic on the roof.

The carport is by now for Irinas and my car: A very small car for me and one for her instruments and her to drive to schools and kindergardens in and around Halle. She is teaching keyboard and piano.

Both cars are electric cars and they are fed by sun power from the roof of the carport – with a LiFePO4 battery.

Our cat died in May 2019 at an age of 16 years.

The energy system: It is reported in some publications and we were candidates to get a price of the Federal State of Saxony-Anhalt for it, the „Green House Number“ – but we never got the price. It consists of hybrid solar panels (totally 64 m² PVT modules on the roof to the East and West) to save solar heat energy and power supply. The heat is stored in 3 geothermal borehole heat exchangers, each of them with a depth of 80 m in our small garden. It was a bit difficult to find a drilling team with such a small drilling rig.