We don’t have a sustainability department, nor do we have a certificate hanging on the wall. Instead, we have a house that has stood for four hundred years – and the deep conviction that the best thing we can do for the environment is to preserve rather than demolish.
What We Do, and What We Do Not
About us
What We Do, and What We Do Not
The house was already there
No cubic metre of concrete is as sustainable as the one you do not pour. The old mill’s walls continue to carry the building, and the corner beam at the entrance has been there since the very beginning. What is new lies beneath the surface: insulation, piping and modern infrastructure, all the work you can no longer see.
What is at work in the basement
On the roof, a system generates electricity and heat simultaneously; in the basement, a storage systems sustains both through the night. Add a fully insulated building envelope to keep the warmth inside and rainwater cisterns that irrigate our park. This is the most elaborate part of the restoration.
Water without the journey
Our mineral water does not travel from Italy – it comes from our own in-house bottling system. Still or sparkling, it is served in glass bottles that are washed and refilled right here. You only begin to appreciate the scale of this choice when you consider how many heavy crates a house with twenty-two suites would otherwise have trucked through the valley.
No little bottles
In the bathrooms we use dispensers, refilled from large containers. No travel-size plastic ending up in the bin after two showers – and, if we are honest, they look better beside the sink too.
What comes from the valley
Bread from the village bakery, honey from Sasbachwalden, cheese and cold cuts from the region. Not because it reads well, but because short journeys taste better – and because the people that deliver them are our neighbours.
Arriving without a car
We collect you from Achern station at no charge, and the KONUS guest card covers buses and trains throughout the Black Forest. If you do arrive by car, you charge it here.
And what we can’t do
Coffee does not grow in the Black Forest and neither do lemons. A house with a pool and five saunas uses energy; no elegant phrase can change that. We would rather tell you where we stand than hang a certificate on the wall.
Good to know
Please ask us about it; we will focus on the specifics.
