From the Construct Ireland archives

While the principles of low energy building apply equally for new build and upgrades, the reality is that htting passive levels becomes much trickier when retrofitting. The Passive House Institute have taken this on board and created a retrofit standard that is ambitious but achievable.

With money leaving local economies across Ireland to service debt and significant drops in local authority revenues, towns such as Dundalk, Ennis and Kilkenny are investigating the possibility of bringing in electronic currencies to keep money circulating locally, as Richard Douthwaite reveals.

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

In the aftermath of our recent awareness raising, Construct Ireland began to research what measures the Irish government was taking to prepare for the Energy directive, and how this compared with views from other EU member states, an investigation that is revealing startling results. Jeff Colley reports.

On 7 June 2011 environment minister Phil Hogan TD signed the latest changes to Part L of the building regulations into law, which will make it mandatory for all new homes to be 60% more energy efficient than the standards at the peak of the construction boom. Jeff Colley sheds some light on the key changes

Ireland ’s reliance on fossil fuel sources for electricity generation places the whole country on unstable ground as these limited resources dwindle

An energy conscious renovation and extension in south Dublin breathes new life into a typical semi detached home — the house is now wrapped with external insulation and boasts breathable and ecological materials too.

There’s rather more to designing a sustainable building than specifying low-embodied energy materials and making sure it will require little energy and maintenance in use. Low water demand and the ability to get the nutrients discharged in the sewage back to the land are important too.

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.

Part of the Mater Hospital redevelopment, the recently completed Mater Orchard building is a first class example of how to integrate sustainable building strategies into a substantial building whilst keeping extra cost to a minimum.