Anyone who wants to build with funding from the Repair Grandma’s House programme faces a range of pitfalls and challenges. Ekonews brings the story of a couple from Moravia who took the plunge. What did Zuzana and her partner have to arrange and find out, what caused them problems, and what went smoothly instead?
Zuzana Filipová is a 37-year-old dog lover from southern Moravia. She runs a dog treats business and is doing well financially. At the end of last year, she and her partner decided they would like to move from their flat in Brno to a family house.
However, they did not want to build on a greenfield site, but rather in an established area and on a plot where an old, energy-inefficient house currently stands. They want to use a subsidy from the Repair Grandma’s House programme, under which up to one million crowns can be obtained for insulation, along with further funding for energy-saving technologies.
The mayor will not allow a green roof
They chose a house in a small municipality, a 15-minute drive north of Brno, on an 800-square-metre plot. As Filipová says, the house is truly old and in a dilapidated state. “It does not even have a foundation slab. We decided to demolish it,” says Filipová.
They want to build a smaller family house on the site, ideally a 4+kk layout, to a net-zero energy standard, i.e. a passive house. However, there is a catch: the plot is in the centre of the municipality and, under the zoning plan, the area is designated as urbanistically and historically significant. “So the appearance of the new house will be a problem. The mayor has already said in advance that he will not allow a green roof. And we are still battling with him over photovoltaics,” says Filipová.
At the beginning of April, the plot had already been transferred to the new owners. “I am currently communicating with the building authority in Blansko, finding out everything that will be needed for the demolition, which documents to submit where, and so on. It is a tough nut to crack because some documents can only be sent digitally, while others have to be submitted physically in paper form, such as neighbours’ consent,” Filipová notes.
Passed around like a hot potato
The first issue the couple faced was whether to submit the application for the so-called Grandma’s House programme themselves or hire a company to do it. Filipová began by reading numerous articles about the programme. Moreover, the scheme, which is part of the New Green Savings programme, recently underwent several changes to its conditions. Grandma’s House now also supports new builds to the so-called net-zero standard, with subsidies of up to 400 thousand crowns.
“It is possible to hire a company to submit the paperwork for us, but it must be said that they charge a substantial amount for handling it. I read that a person is capable of submitting the application themselves, so I wanted to try it,” Filipová recalls.
However, she had considerable concerns about submitting the application from the outset. “On the one hand, I read that applying is simple, but I downloaded the documents from the official website and, uffff, there is a lot of it. They also list consultants on the website who are meant to advise you, but in our case the consultants passed us around like a hot potato and I found out nothing,” she says.
They left it to a company
She sees a major problem, for example, in the explanation provided by the Ministry of the Environment. “Regarding the item for new builds, nobody was able to tell me whether it is 400 thousand crowns plus the Grandma’s House subsidy, or 400 thousand crowns for new builds and that is it. In other words, the amount for insulation and other measures is then not taken into account financially, unlike for an old building,” Filipová explains.
Eventually, she and her partner visited a stand dedicated to the New Green Savings programme at a construction trade fair in Brno. “I asked the lady there whether it was possible to apply for the subsidy myself. She very gently suggested that it was so complicated that she would not recommend it,” Filipová says.
This was also why the couple ultimately decided to have a company prepare the application. “It costs 60 thousand crowns (some companies charge as much as 100 thousand crowns for the same task, author’s note), but that is better than missing out on the whole thing,” Filipová explains.
She was also prompted to leave it to a company by the fact that if errors are found in an application after submission, the deadline for correcting or supplementing the information is only a few days. “We are worried whether we would even be able to obtain the requested information in such a short time,” she adds.
They will carry out “re-molition”, recycling what they can
The next step for Zuzana and her partner is to demolish the house in an environmentally friendly way. They want to start with gradual demolition, in which building materials are sorted by type into glass, wood, bricks and other materials. “We want to keep the things we can reuse. For example, we will make a chicken coop or raised vegetable planters from the fired bricks,” Filipová plans. They want to sort the window panes into glass recycling containers, use the roof timbers for heating, sell the iron to a scrap dealer, and so on.
They have not yet decided with complete certainty whether to build a timber house or a masonry house. Overall, they would like to secure a subsidy of around one million crowns through Grandma’s House, which is the maximum amount for optimal insulation of an existing building, rather than for a new build.
For now, the couple are financing everything from savings, which should also cover demolition, preparation of the house design and submission of the application to the building authority. Once they have planning permission, they want to approach banks and find out what mortgage they can obtain. “By then, we will hopefully already know the amount of the Grandma’s House subsidy, and therefore also the amount we will need to borrow,” they say.
One of the biggest attractions of the current Grandma’s House programme is that the money can be obtained as an advance payment. But that is not a motivation for this particular pair of builders. “We see it differently: we simply need and want to build, and we will get a mortgage. Rather, Grandma’s House itself motivated us to include more technologies. On our own, we would finance only some of them; this way, it can be more efficient,” says Zuzana. In their new home, they would like complete insulation, a heat pump, photovoltaics and an electric vehicle charging connection.
“The deluge of information frustrates me”
Overall, Zuzana Filipová has mixed feelings about the beginning of her journey towards the Repair Grandma’s House subsidy. Submitting the application itself has proved more complicated than she expected. “You know, I am not afraid that I would be unable to provide or arrange something; it is more that the deluge of information frustrates me. Articles here, a podcast there, something from the ministry elsewhere... Then you get lost in it, because the information often contradicts itself and is mutually exclusive,” the builder shrugs.
She is also bothered that the consultants cannot answer a simple question: whether their case will be considered a renovation or a new build. “And that gives me the feeling: Zuzana, you cannot do this! You will overlook something and, because of some stupid mistake, they simply will not give you anything,” Filipová confides.
She and her partner would very much like some kind of simple guide to Grandma’s House to be created. “In practical terms, it should say: We did this; before submitting, you need to arrange this and that, and then you apply. You have the decision, the documents and you build. Unfortunately, nobody has produced anything similar yet. And that frustrates me because I get quite lost in the process of how to prepare the documents for a correct application,” Filipová comments.
She adds that companies now submit subsidy applications on behalf of builders, but they have their own interests, so they tell the builder only a certain portion of the information. “There are many such companies on the market, each releases a small balloon of information, while each also does things in its own way. So when you then sift through information about the subsidy, you suddenly become confused and overwhelmed,” Filipová sums up.
You will soon be able to read on Ekonews about how the story of the Moravian builders and the Repair Grandma’s House subsidy continues, whether they manage to submit the application successfully, obtain the subsidy and begin construction.
