Passive House Plus

Deep retrofit transforms big, complex South Dublin home The Thursday long read: At first glance, this sprawling house in Blackrock would appear to be a nightmare candidate for a deep energy upgrade — large and sprawling, and with a mix of structures built at different times and with different materials. But guided by the passive house standard, the team behind it managed to turn a G-rated energy guzzler into a healthy and very-low energy family home – complete with an A rating. https://lnkd.in/ekMZ84pV

A timely reshare of this article Andy Simmonds and I wrote, on the idea of zero carbon construction. Is it real? If not, what’s the best that we can - and should - do? Could reshare this every week, as it remains constantly relevant!

It’s wonderful to see this kind of discussion happening within organisations like RIBA. Wherever possible buildings should be designed based on strategies which have been proven to perform well for occupants and planet alike, based on post occupancy evaluation results. One observation though: If a building strategy - such as building to the passive house standard - has already been found to work consistently well across monitoring studies of thousands of buildings, should we worry less about post occupancy evaluation? Should we be aiming to have a framework in place where the main requirement for POE falls not on proven standards like passive house, but on new, experimental approaches? How about a rating scale where design approaches and standards are higher rated if we have more POE data showing high performance levels on eg energy and indoor environmental quality, and lower rated if we either have little or no POE data on them, or if the data we have shows poor performance?

How to decarbonise our housing stock For the Thursday long read, Lenny Antonelli writes that rapidly decarbonising our cold, leaky dwellings is the greatest challenge facing the building industry, one fraught with complexity and risk. Given that the UK faces similar challenges to Ireland – in a similar climate, with similar housing stock – what can we learn from British efforts to meet this challenge? Leading UK green building association the AECB has put forward a proposal that could help to chart a new course through these choppy waters. https://lnkd.in/ecPqGnqB

The house that costs €70 a year to heat For our long read this week, we look back a striking contemporary house, designed around an existing timber chalet, that managed to go passive on a budget for one lucky family of six, all while inadvertently blitzing Ireland’s nearly zero energy building standard. https://lnkd.in/eQzNzNwn

On TOMORROW! 💪Be a legend in your own lunchtime! 🕑Weds 25 Sept 1pm Join our step-by-step webinar to complete the #ScottishPassivhausEquivalent consultation live during your lunch break. https://lnkd.in/exDJrCGB Friends of the Earth Scotland Alex Rowley MSP Stop Climate Chaos Scotland Architects Climate Action Network (ACAN) Scotland Architects Declare The Scottish Ecological Design Association (AECB) Association for Environment Conscious Building Built Environment - Smarter Transformation Passive House Accelerator Passive House Plus Energy Action Scotland Scottish Federation of Housing Associations Good Homes Alliance LETI

The Thursday long read - Elegant Mayo ‘longhouse’ gets A1 rating The home of a local passive house builder, this super low energy home in County Mayo is inspired by traditional building forms in the west of Ireland — and it blitzed Ireland’s nearly zero energy building standard a whole five years before it was set to become mandatory. Words: John Cradden | Photography: Michael Horan https://lnkd.in/eigGebmE

The Thursday long read - Is zero carbon construction actually possible? As the world edges ever closer to the precipice of runaway climate change, some sustainability terms have moved from relative obscurity towards the mainstream of marketing and public discourse – and none more so than zero carbon. But is zero carbon construction a real prospect, or is it just wishful thinking? Words by John Butler and Andy Simmonds. https://lnkd.in/edHnZS96

Breaking: Cairn Homes announces plans for major passive house schemes Are you sitting down? This morning, an Irish house building giant has made a major move on passive house — publishing a position paper and announcing the ongoing construction of over 1,700 homes to the standard. Yes, really. Read more at: https://lnkd.in/ecC7tm37

The Thursday long read - Stylish Stockport retrofit achieves radical energy savings This inspiring project may be exactly what the deep retrofit sector needs: an example of how to turn a bog standard, cold suburban home of little architectural merit into a climate champion delivering outstanding levels of energy performance, comfort and health, all while transforming the building architecturally. https://lnkd.in/etjqqqPs