Issue 47 - passivehouseplus.ie

The penny has yet to drop for many clients and designers about the risks posed by overheating in an Irish context. With the climate hotting up and building design typically uninformed by feedback on actual performance, is the industry heading for a hot mess, asks Dr Shane Colclough?

While tokenistic or poorly conceived attempts at supporting the decarbonisation and greening of buildings still abound in the finance sector, there are signs of structural changes on the horizon - changes designed to unlock widespread change. But do those changes go far enough?

As governments come under increasing pressure to make real and significant reductions in energy use and carbon emissions while tackling energy poverty, interest in passive house has never been higher. But short of expecting regulators to commit to certified passive house, is there a way of adopting the key principles that make passive house work?

By Nick Grant and Peter Wilkinson

Sometimes a building comes along that does almost too much. Passive house stalwarts Kirsty Maguire Architects’ latest opus is an award-winning architectural, engineering, and sustainability feat – which asks questions not just about how we build, but how we live.

Fancy owning an energy positive, timber-based passive house in one of the most desirable locations in England, without the hassle of having to build it yourself? A new three-house development nearing completion in Hertfordshire may be just the ticket.

As the grid gets greener and the case for heat pumps as a decarbonisation silver bullet becomes increasingly compelling, questions are starting to be asked about how far we need to go with retrofitting building fabric – or whether we need improve fabric at all. We ignore fabric at our peril, warns Toby Cambray.

Near the peak of the Celtic Tiger – at a time when developers were throwing up often sub-standard homes at a record pace, one self-build project pointed to a different approach, writes Dr Marc Ó Riain.

The proof in the pudding with a notionally low energy building is in the eating. Since moving into their new passive house a little under two years ago, the Murray family’s heating costs have been scarcely believable – in a home that also blitzes the embodied carbon targets in the RIAI 2030 Climate Challenge.

A number of Ireland’s largest house builders are turning to the passive house standard, to meet the need for proven approaches to delivering high performance sustainable buildings.

Irish homeowners can now borrow €5,000 to €75,000 at significantly lower interest rates to retrofit their homes, thanks to a new €500m government-backed scheme.

All new homes in Europe must meet binding embodied carbon reduction targets and produce zero on site emissions by 2030, due to changes led by Irish Green Party MEP Ciarán Cuffe.

Highly polluting cements are to be ruled out of public sector projects in Ireland from September, due to new government public procurement rules.

Recent analysis has suggested a slowdown in the property sector for 2024, but what impact might a drop in inflation have? Mel Reynolds runs the numbers.

The en masse global shift to high performance buildings is essential to meeting the climate challenge and improving quality of life around the world, an international conference has heard.

With 2023 being the warmest year on record, and construction and the built environment accounting for 37 per cent of Ireland’s national emissions, urgent action is needed to decarbonise our sector – and a green public procurement tool has the ability to help unlock transformative change, as Irish Green Building Council programme manager Rachel Loughrey explains.

Occupants of homes with solar PV arrays have an opportunity to optimise the use of self-generated energy – by participating in an SEAI funded research project.

Firetite, the world’s first aerated mineral clay insulation, has been used to help solve fire safety issues in a Dublin apartment scheme.

Ecocem, Europe’s leading provider of low carbon cement technologies, has today announced the appointment of Sally Anne Sherry as managing director for its UK and Ireland business operations. In this position, Sherry will play a pivotal role in driving Ecocem’s growth and sustainability initiatives, and market presence in the UK and Ireland.

The developer of a recent housing development in Rathdrum, Co. Wicklow has installed the 6kW Grant Aerona³ R32 air source heat pump as the main heat source of a customised Grant integrated heating package across all its 61 homes.

Passive house certification for smaller scale projects just got substantially simpler – thanks to a new software tool launched by the Passive House Institute.

Magnesium oxide (MgO) boards are poised to “disrupt” the construction industry, a new white paper has claimed – meaning products like Cem-Rock from Limerickbased supplier Greenspan may be poised for widespread adoption.