From the Construct Ireland archives

Creating the right comfort in buildings for elderly people involves ensuring a warm internal environment, which typically results in high energy consumption. John Hearne visited the new Castle Gardens Retirement Village as it approached completion and found a project that combines complimentary low energy technologies, materials and design to deliver high levels of comfort whilst also keeping running costs, energy consumption and carbon emissions low

In this adapted extract from his new book Natural Building: A Guide to Materials and Techniques, seminal eco architect Professor Tom Woolley outlines some of the reasons why natural building is necessary.

Buildings that are designed or refurbished to use little energy all too often fail to deliver the expected performance, if the building occupants aren’t able to use the building as intended. John Hearne reveals the crucial role that user-friendly heating controls play in ensuring that a theoretically low energy building delivers the expected results.

Ireland — along with much of the western world — relies on the International Energy Agency‘s oil production forecasts. But are they reliable, asks Lenny Antonelli?

Some buildings, by their nature, tend to have larger energy requirements. Occupied around the clock, with occupants who feel the cold, nursing homes are a case in point. John Hearne visited a north Dublin building where a range of different sustainable technologies operate in tandem to deliver the residents’ heating and hot water requirements

The Department of Education has made its commitment to energy efficiency and CO2 reduction clear in developing and bringing into practice targets for primary school design that aim for less than half of the accepted good practice in the field. Project coordinator John Dolan, Senior Engineer with the Department of Education explains how this approach works within normal Departmental budgetary limits to create school buildings that show the way ahead for building designers.

In spite of the obvious emergence of technologies and design approaches to reduce the impact of new build, environmental standards remained poor throughout the duration of the housing boom. Now, a unique combination of political will, smart incentives, and a new market of informed and empowered buyers may be about to change that, writes Lenny Antonelli

Richard Douthwaite explains how inadequate conventional energy generation is and reveals the potential that combined heat and power & energy service companies can offer.

Ramon Arratia, sustainability director for InterfaceFLOR in Europe, Middle East, Africa & India

Is it possible to ditch fossil fuels and run a 1970s Irish bungalow on solar energy? Norman McMillan’s renovated A1-rated bungalow in Carlow proves it is.