Passive House Plus

The Thursday long read - Creative play cafe brings passive benefits to Bristol families Earlier this year, Jason Walsh wrote about a passive play café in Bristol. What had been a dilapidated building has been transformed into a crucial social space by a husband and wife team of environmentally and socially engaged architects, aided by a polymath sustainability consultant. https://lnkd.in/ektRKqeX

The leading deep retrofit provider and one-stop-shop KORE Retrofit has appointed Dr Barry Mc Carron FCIAT as managing director. As regular readers of Passive House Plus will be aware, Mc Carron brings particularly indepth knowledge of evidence-based approaches to low energy building and retrofit. His doctoral research demonstrated statistically significant reductions in cancer-causing radon gas in passive houses compared to neighbouring homes. A former chair of Passive House Association Ireland, Barry completed a certified passive retrofit to his own home in Monaghan, which was featured in issue 46 of Passive House Plus. https://lnkd.in/eNjfPpyF

The Thursday long read - Glassy passive house defies shading norms Huge expanses of unshaded glass are usually a taboo for passive house designers, but with his clients insistent on maximising their wide-angle coastal panorama, this project’s architect found clever ways to integrate the passive house approach with wrapping the house’s ground floor in glass. https://lnkd.in/gk4zFnWX

The Thursday long read - Handled with care Relativey normal service resumes this week, and we only step back as far as our last issue, when Kate de Selincourt posited that if thermal comfort is important for people of all ages, it’s even more so for elderly people, for whom the right living conditions can be a matter of life or death. Kate visited one award-winning extra care facility in Exeter to learn how the decision to go passive was working out for the residents. https://lnkd.in/eQkyYFXc

The 100th Thursday long read! A super deep reach into the archives to read an article from issue 1, where architect Martin Murry helped launch the mag by finding inspiration in 5 ground breaking international passive certified houses. https://lnkd.in/gqgH8SBT

The Thursday long read - Home from home Few architects are tasked with knocking their old family home, but for John Morehead, once this difficult decision was made, it was a chance to create a future-proofed new passive house that embraces its stunning natural surroundings and exhibits remarkable attention to detail. https://lnkd.in/e_rAqBdF

The Thursday long read - The PH+ guide to overheating Back in 2021, Claire Jamieson of Phi Architecture wrote that as awareness of the urgency of the climate crisis grows, efforts to kickstart en masse deep energy efficiency interventions are gathering apace. But poorly conceived low energy building efforts can lead to unintended consequences including overheating – a risk that’s bound to grow as the world warms up. Jamieson detailed the risks and offered some solutions on how to create low energy buildings that are comfortable in both summer and winter. Read it at https://lnkd.in/gE2N7EW4 Issue 47 of Passive House Plus is out now and can be read at www.passivehouseplus.ie!

The Thursday long read - Bungalow bills From issue 46 of Passive House Plus, John Hearne asks what does it feel like to suffer the cold, mould and discomfort of a 1960s bungalow, and experience its rebirth as a passive house? The owner of one award-winning project spills the beans. https://lnkd.in/e2NieZHw

The Thursday long read - New England rebel A stunning passive house in Cork breaks the conventions of passive house form with a design that manages to be both dramatic yet discreet at the same time, inspired by a US project to contort itself beautifully into its steeply sloping site. https://lnkd.in/eahNhGys

Issue 47 out now! The latest issue of Passive House Plus is at the printers, but it's available online now. If you can't wait till the magazine arrives through your letterbox, click here to read the Irish edition: https://lnkd.in/efCXyDRp or here to read the UK edition: https://lnkd.in/eMFQHXqY A few sneak peaks: Big picture Sometimes reality is stranger than fiction. And sometimes strange but breathtaking fiction subverts reality. This issue we’re taking a break from our normal approach to Big Picture, with good reason: passive house playing a starring role in an extraordinary US TV show. Airtight delight The proof in the pudding with a notionally low energy building is in the eating. Since moving into their new passive house a little under two years ago, the Murray family’s heating costs have been scarcely believable – in a home that also blitzes the embodied carbon targets in the RIAI 2030 Climate Challenge. Ace of Herts Fancy owning an energy positive, timber-based passive house in one of the most desirable locations in England, without the hassle of having to build it yourself? A new three-house development nearing completion in Hertfordshire may be just the ticket. Living proof Sometimes a building comes along that does almost too much. Passive house stalwarts Kirsty Maguire Architects’ latest opus is an award-winning architectural, engineering, and sustainability feat – which asks questions not just about how we build, but how we live. Pathway to passive or road to ruin? As governments come under increasing pressure to make real and significant reductions in energy use and carbon emissions while tackling energy poverty, interest in passive house has never been higher. But short of expecting regulators to commit to certified passive house, is there a way of adopting the key principles that make passive house work? We also ask if big finance is finally getting serious about sustainability, and are we ignoring overheating risks in low energy dwellings. All this plus the usual insights from our columnists, and latest news affecting the sustainable construction industry in both Ireland and the UK.