From the Construct Ireland archives

Historic buildings are all too easy to ignore when considering potential candidates for energy upgrade work. The heritage value of an historic building can often mitigate against the most obvious interventions, such as adding some form of wall insulation or replacing windows. Architect Fergal McGirl takes a typical Georgian building in Dublin through the energy rating process and proposes some considered upgrade measures. 

As long term readers of Construct Ireland will recall, the mainstreaming in recent years of sustainable design and construction has been exemplified in many innovative local authority offices. John Hearne visited Aras Contae an Chláir, and discovered a building which attempts to holistically minimise environmental impact, with attention paid to more than just energy performance and carbon emissions.

A new house in west Cork offers a green vision for the future of Irish home building: not only is it A-rated, airtight and highly energy efficient, it’s built with ecological materials that are manufactured in Ireland too.

Much of the debate on reducing international carbon emissions has focused on the extra cost of making the necessary cuts to slow the onset of climate change. According to Richard Douthwaite, the Irish Government is considering introducing Cap and Share, a system which would actually earn ordinary Irish people money for reducing emissions.

Landowners & Cement Producers Gain, Homebuyers & Taxpayers Suffer. By Richard Douthwaite

Brian Homan, Joint Managing Director of leading consulting engineers Homan O’Brien Associates describes a nursing home currently being built that is adopting a sustainable building approach to deliver healthy, comfortable accommodation at low running costs.

The building is the first all timber office complex in Ireland. It covers almost 2,300m2 of floor space and provides accommodation for almost 100 staff working in a wide range of forestry related disciplines.

Heat recovery ventilation, a technology that has become a standard building application in Scandinavian countries, is rapidly gaining recognition in Ireland as a solution to both problems.

Martin Murray, chairman of the Passive House Association of Ireland and founder of Martin Murray Architects, explains why the world’s leading energy efficiency standard is on the up in Ireland

The rapid emergence of sustainable building in Ireland has been heavily influenced by the techniques of early-adopters extending from Scandinavia, to Canada, to Germany and Austria. John Hearne visited a recently completed timber home in Galway which uses Austrian know-how to couple air-tightness, high levels of insulation and healthy materials with a sustainable approach to heating and ventilation