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As if the implications of the unfolding global financial crisis weren’t bad enough, the Irish economy must also contend with the consequences of a banking system exposed to unprecedented property-related debts. Reflecting on the ongoing crisis, Richard Douthwaite explains why investment in local energy innovation may prove the key to improving Ireland’s economic health
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As the new-build sector grinds to a halt a window of opportunity has
opened for builders, architects and other construction service
providers – refurbishing Ireland’s existing housing stock. Jason Walsh
visited an end-terrace house in inner city Dublin to see just how
significant the improvements can be
It’s official: the building boom is over – the number of house completions in August dropped to just 3,605 while figures show that total completions in the first six months of the year stood at 27,736 units, 29 per cent below the same time in 2007. Construction employment, meanwhile, has bottomed-out and is now eighteen per cent lower than last year according to figures released by the Central Statistics Office. Everyone in the industry is asking: “What is to be done?”
One answer comes straight from the sustainable sector: improve the existing housing stock. The low quality of Ireland’s housing stock has been something of a hobby horse for Construct Ireland for some time now but it appears that the conditions may finally be right for a significant programme.
Of course, not everyone is waiting for the government and the construction industry to get into gear. Plenty of home-owners are taking matters into their own hands and re-working typically energy inefficient houses around the country. Catherine Cleary and her family did just that, buying an unremarkable end-terrace in inner south Dublin and transforming it into a green house that wears its sustainability on its sleeve.
The house is likely to be familiar to many Construct Ireland readers – Cleary, a journalist, documented the building process in the Sunday Business Post. Cleary notes that the house’s efficiency was somewhere around the G-standard of Building Energy Ratings (BER) and is now a high-B.
For Cleary and her family going green was an imperative: “We lived in a Victorian terrace house in Wicklow town before,” she said. “It had some modifications – double glazing and a modern heating system, but it was pretty energy hungry.”
As being environmentally conscious is something of a way of life for Cleary and her family, the initial decision was made to take the major step of going green at home, but cost considerations were a factor, as they always are, in just how much could be done.
The first thing she and her family decided to do was to move back to Dublin. Both she and her husband work in the city so they were able to identify commuting as a major source of energy inefficiency: “It seemed crazy to invest in a pellet boiler in Wicklow and commute 60 miles a day,” she said. “From knowing that we were going to do work on the house, we did it in the greenest way possible.”
So: a house in Dublin was called for. Leaving questions of embodied
energy aside, it is of course easier to build a green house from
scratch than it is to renovate an older house but it is also a costly
and time-consuming process.
“We started from the ground up,” she said. “We knew it was going to be a challenge.”
Most of the financial outlay was at the beginning of the project and
the green measures added an estimated e20,000 to the total cost of the
renovation but Cleary is estimating a six per cent overall return on
investment in terms of reduced energy consumption.
The house underwent significant refurbishment and extension, which
increased the floor area from just over 80 square metres to 131.5
square metres, resulting in a house comprised of three bedrooms, a
study and increased living, dining, kitchen, utility and bathroom
spaces.
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Issue 1, Vol 5 Out Now
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