Housing - passivehouseplus.co.uk

The real estate industry faces a ‘triple threat’ of climate related issues unless it takes action now, a senior sustainability expert has warned.

A new UK property developer specialising in passive house projects is currently on site with its first scheme, Pure Meadows in Oakenshaw, Bradford.

Applications are now open for 2020 for SuperHomes, the ‘one-stop shop’ scheme for home retrofit projects in Ireland.

The Irish Green Building Council launched a zero-carbon standard for new homes at its Better Homes conference in Dublin today, Thursday November 7. The new standard will enable Irish home builders to offer certified zero carbon homes to home buyers.

The entire UK housing market — from self-builders and house buyers through to large-scale developers, housing associations and local authorities — must start demanding a much higher level of quality from new homes in order to ensure the market delivers buildings that are genuinely healthy, sustainable and low energy. That is according to Will Kirkman, managing director of leading sustainable building product supplier Ecomerchant.

Researchers from the School of Physics at NUI Galway are seeking to recruit 100 households to measure indoor environmental air quality within Irish homes that have been built to be highly energy efficient, by deploying remote sensors within the homes.

Recent headlines suggest first time buyers are being pushed out of the housing market by ‘non-household’ buyers, so-called ‘cuckoo’ funds. Official figures suggest that private companies are not the only competition in the new homes market – there may be a ‘magpie’ out there also.

The UK’s official climate change advisor has called on the government to tighten energy efficiency standards for new housing to bring them down, or close to, passive house standard.

A new one-day conference set to be held in Dublin next month will look at the twin challenges of solving Ireland's housing crisis with rapid-build construction, while at the same time meeting new standards for nearly zero energy buildings (nZEBs).

Leading green lender Ecology Building Society has welcomed the publication of the Green Finance Taskforce’s report to the UK government on boosting green finance, but warned that any measures to stimulate green lending must be long-term and sustainable.

The Department of the Environment has written to Dublin’s local authorities warning against adopting higher quality housing standards – and threatened to overrule Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown’s proposal to mandate the passive house standard – in correspondence obtained by Passive House Plus magazine.

The majority of homes in Dublin city have a Building Energy Rating (BER) of D1 or lower, according to figures released by Dublin’s energy agency Codema.

AIB has announced the launched of a €350m “new homes development fund” that it says will support the construction of new homes in Dublin, Cork and Galway. The bank is inviting applications from “borrowers who can demonstrate prior experience in residential development”.

Lorna Kelly, of the Irish Timber Frame Manafacturers Association, takes a look at IrishTimber Frame

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.

In September, Sustainable Energy Ireland launched a major energy efficient housing development in Tuam, Co Galway. Houses in the development are over 70% more energy efficient than houses built to standard Building Regulations requirements. Construct Ireland’s John Hearne describes.