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In an ideal world every occupied building in Ireland would be energy upgraded to the highest standard, tapping into numerous benefits for the building occupant, the construction industry and society as a whole. Construct Ireland is calling for the introduction of pay as you save, a repayment model which offers the potential of making significant energy upgrade investments achievable in the vast majority of Irish buildings, as Jeff Colley reveals.
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Government incentives are crucial to sparking a massive energy upgrade
of our housing stock, but practical examples are just as important.
Keen to push his home's energy performance to the limits, one Dublin
homeowner overhauled his entire building fabric and installed renewable
heating systems and heat recovery ventilation. Lenny Antonelli visited the house.
When Stephen Hegarty bought his spacious brick-clad home in Foxrock, south Dublin in 2006, he knew it needed refurbishment. What he didn't know was that he'd end up giving it a massive revamp and coming within a whisker of the onerous passivhaus (or passive house) standard.
Eager to reduce his energy use and create a comfortable healthy home, Hegarty began educating himself on low energy retrofit. During 18 months of research - online and in magazines like Construct Ireland – he came across the website of passive house specialists MosArt, whose director Tomás O'Leary lives in Ireland's first passive house, built in 2005.
"I didn't push for passive house. I just wanted a warm, well-insulated home," Hegarty says. But a visit to O'Leary's Wicklow home convinced him it was worth aiming for passive. "When I saw Tomás's house, that sold me. The moment you walk in you begin to see what can be done." The passivhaus standard aims to reduce the need for conventional heating and cooling systems by emphasising a super-insulated, air-tight building envelope.
Hegarty hired MosArt, and the firm planned a total revamp of the house: walls were pump-filled and dry-lined, floors gutted and re-insulated, triple-glazed windows added, air leakage drastically cut and solar thermal panels and an air-to-water heat pump installed. The garage was knocked to make way for a new kitchen, the attic converted into a bedroom and an en suite bathroom added to the master bedroom.
O'Leary was impressed with the level of research his client had undertaken. "He was so well informed and that was great. There are a lot of misconceptions out there about how to build things, but he had his research done. We find that when people come to us, they want passive, you don't have to convince them."
MosArt worked with the Passive House Planning Package (PHPP) software - used to design and certify passive houses - to specify insulation levels and glazing and design the heating system. External insulation was ruled out as it would have covered the brick facade and destroyed the house's character.
The spacious sitting room, like all of the ground floor, features underfloor heating
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