In this first instalment of his brand new ‘Help Desk’ feature, architect and passive house designer Simon McGuinness of Dublin Institute of Technology invites questions on all aspects of passive house, retrofit and low energy building.

For a while now, schemes that aim to encourage the mass uptake of home energy upgrades — essential for cutting carbon emissions from our building stock — have tended to fall into two camps: those that focus on shallow measures like cavity wall insulation and new boilers, and deep retrofit like the Passive House Institute’s Enerphit standard. A new Irish retrofit scheme aims to point the way forward by bridging the gap between these two extremes.

An exciting and innovative new deep retrofit project in Solihull has drastically cut the energy consumption of a small block of flats by smoothly and efficiently wrapping the entire structure in both insulation and ventilation ducting, delivering huge energy savings and minimal disturbance to the residents.

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.

Green Building Store continues to fine tune passive house design and construction techniques with exacting attention to detail, as demonstrated by its latest superinsulated, stone-clad cavity wall house in West Yorkshire.

Completed early this year, the new Centre for Medicine at the University of Leicester is by far the largest single building in the UK to meet the passive house standard — and not surprisingly, its design and construction posed tough new challenges for how to meet the rigorous low energy standard on such a large, complicated building.

The just-finished second phase of Durkan Residential’s ambitious Silken Park scheme in south-west Dublin bridges the gap between two extremes: while phase one was built to the 2002 building regulations, phase three — which will break ground next year — will comprise 59 passive certified units.

Although Ireland’s energy efficiency requirements for non-residential buildings fall far short of EU requirements, occasionally a progressive client will take matters into their own hands and push the envelope of sustainable design, such as Gas Networks Ireland’s award-winning Finglas offices.

This issue features the world’s smallest certified passive house in France, and the first certified passive house on New Zealand’s South Island.

The construction industry is unwittingly facing the prospect of immediate, dramatic changes to how buildings are designed and constructed to comply with imminent EU energy efficiency deadlines. In the first article in our new Dispatches section – where we’ll attempt to probe and investigate in detail the burning issues arising from Ireland’s transition to sustainable building – Passive House Plus investigates.

Words: Jeff Colley & Lenny Antonelli

In the third instalment of Nessa Duggan’s column on designing and building a passive house for her young family, she describes the process of designing a house to suit the family’s lifestyle.

We all do, argues Dr Peter Rickaby, but the goal of mass retrofitting our energy inefficient building stock is hampered by the fact that when it comes to most retrofits, we simply don’t know what we’re trying to achieve.

Kingspan Insulation has announced that it has “revolutionised” its rigid insulation technology with the introduction of new low lambda products for floor, wall and soffit applications — delivering premium thermal performance with a minimal construction thickness, with a lambda value of just 0.018 W/mK. 

The Passive House Association of Ireland (PHAI) has announced that it has welcomed four new patron members to the group: the Passive House Academy, Cygnum Timber Frame, Medite SmartPly and J & N Windows Ltd.

A scheme of social housing in Dublin has become the first to achieve the Irish Green Building Council (IGBC)’s Home Performance Index (HPI) label. The block of apartments at Rathmines Crescent was built by Dublin City Council and designed by its own architects. The label allows housing providers and private developers to highlight the quality and sustainability of their homes to occupants, investors and home buyers. 

Leading construction testing and research organisation BSRIA has announced that it is concerned with recent findings that toxic nanoparticles from air pollution have been discovered in human brains in “abundant quantities”.

Ireland has particular vulnerabilities to climate change and has a very strong stake in ensuring that global action on reducing carbon emissions is effective, according to Laura Burke (pictured), director general of the EPA. 

Prefab passive house specialists naked house Ltd recently completed the installation of a fully integrated passive house services system at their Marsh Road project in Shropshire. MVHR and solar thermal system are a standard part of the naked house system, with extra optional modules to enhance the building’s potential to save the occupants’ running costs. At Marsh Road, this included a log burner, thermal store and central logic control system. 

Although full passive house training is regarded as the best way to gain an in-depth understanding of all aspects of passive house design, some construction professionals may not have the time or resources to be able to attend the typical two week passive house course.