From the Construct Ireland archives

Renovated agricultural barn marries its traditional look with modern green features

Leading Eco Architects Rachel Bevan and Professor Tom Woolley look at the connection betweeLeading Eco Architects Rachel Bevan and Professor Tom Woolley look at the connection between conservation and sustainabilityn conservation and sustainability.

Brian Dowd, ESB’s products and services manager, talks about the company’s new energy strategy and the launch of the next phase of their Halo programme.

Randy Ralston and Mel Cronin aimed for the passive house standard with their upgrade, and though they didn’t quite get there they ended up with a house that produces more energy than it consumes, making it one of the country’s flagship green renovation projects.

No matter how energy efficient a building method is, constructing a house from scratch will always cause some damage to the environment - but what if a building material could absorb more carbon than it causes to be released over its life cycle? Lenny Antonelli visits a hempcrete house in Co. Down that seeks to trial this innovative method of building

Building a visitor centre at such an evocative site as the Cliffs of Moher, one of Ireland’s greatest tourist attractions must have been something of a challenge. By attempting to cater for visitors, the centre could so easily have ruined the rugged, barren landscape which makes people visit in the first place. John Hearne visited the new interpretive centre to discover a building which addresses this problem by becoming part of the landscape, whilst using eco technologies to reduce the building’s strain on the broader environment.

The ESB's Home Insulation Scheme aimed to upgrade the homes of 1,000 pensioners on fuel allowance last year - it ended up reaching almost three times that number, reducing carbon emissions and improving the lives of many. Lenny Antonelli found out more.

Richard Douthwaite proposes a new bank-free, debt-free way of financing property purchase and development to get the market working again and clear up the mess left by the bubble.

On Tuesday the 15th of March a passive house, a house that does not need to be heated, was built a few miles outside of Galway. The brain child of Lars Pettersson of Galway based Scandinavian Homes Ltd, it is believed to be the world’s first standardized and factory made passive house.

Ambitious companies in the Irish sustainable building sector should look to the US, says Century Homes founder Gerry McCaughey. As chief executive of LA-based green building business consultancy Infineco, McCaughey is witnessing first-hand how the land of opportunity is waking up to green construction.