Facing the challenge of how to bring a Victorian home with damp old brick walls up to a modern low energy standard, architect Brendan O’Connor deployed an innovative solution: build entirely new and superinsulated timber frame walls within the old structure.

The Green Homes Grant scheme failed because politicians failed to heed more than a decade of lessons about how to do retrofit well, writes Dr Peter Rickaby, and now there will be an even bigger hill to climb. 

A stunning new 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.

Leading wood fibre insulation manufacturer Steico has announced plans to build a new factory with three production lines at its recently acquired site in Gromadka, Poland.

A new passive house in Manchester, built by Passive Building Structures, has achieved an airtightness test result of 0.31 air changes per hour at 50 Pascals on its final blower door test, easily beating the passive house airtightness standard of 0.6.

Liquid airtight membranes are revolutionising airtightness works in public and commercial buildings, according to leading supplier Blowerproof UK, because of their ease and speed of application especially direct to block, brick and concrete, and inherent ability to deliver airtightness around difficult junctions.

Plans for over 33,000 net zero carbon new homes are underway across the UK, Passive House Plus can reveal.

The UK's net-zero carbon target for all homes by 2050 is unlikely to be met without a major overhaul of the current energy certification system, MPs have warned.

Radon is one of the most dangerous indoor air pollutants, yet there is little research on how it is affected by different forms of construction and ventilation. A new study, however, suggests that homes built to the passive house standard are significantly less at risk of radon build-up.

Despite the challenges of getting planning permission within a national park, a new passive house on a hillside in the South Downs managed to woo the planners with a sympathetic, discerning design inspired by a surprising source — two dilapidated old chicken sheds.

Industry-leading mechanical ventilation company BEAM Vacuum & Ventilation has launched a new mobile phone app for their award-winning, next generation HERU heat recovery ventilation range.

A beautifully detailed and rustic new passive house in the north of Scotland was built with a unique off-site construction system using local timber, and was created by a design-and-build firm that aims to put sustainability at the heart of everything it does.

It sounds like an impossibility: a high density, architectural, zero energy home on the tightest of back garden sites, adaptable to the needs of everyone from empty nesters to a family of six without opening a toolbox. But sometimes a project comes along that redefines what is possible.

This issue features an intriguing new passive house apartment building in north-west Spain.

Condensation within the structure of buildings is a lot more complex than condensation in a sweaty pub on a Friday night, writes building physics expert Toby Cambray.

How do ventilation filters work, and can they help to protect us against Covid-19? Toby Cambray weighs in on the physics of a subject that is more complex and interesting than you might expect.

In the early stages of the Covid-19 crisis, there was little official recognition that airborne transmission was a risk. Has that view changed, and what role will building ventilation play when winter approaches?

With governments across Europe looking for ways to jump start their economies following the early impact of Covid-19, attention is increasingly turning to deep retrofit. But while there is strong evidence that deep retrofit could play a major role, the devil will be in the detail – and the challenge of dramatically upscaling a nascent industry shouldn’t be underestimated.

Built mostly with clay blocks and sited above the sandy shores of Seaton, on the Devon coast, this new development of eight high-end apartments not only meets the passive house ‘plus’ standard — meaning it pairs the requisite ultra-low energy fabric with a substantial amount of renewable energy generation — but it also boasts serious attention to the use of ecological and healthy material.

This issue features the passive house ‘plus’ certified headquarters of Métropole Rouen Normandie, located on the banks of the Seine in Rouen, France, and designed by Jacques Ferrier Architecture.

NI still plans to tighten energy rules for new build

Before it was halted until January 2021, the Grenfell Tower inquiry heard a series of damning testimonies on the culture towards fire safety within leading building material manufacturers and certification bodies in the years leading up to the fire.

The Welsh government is set to introduce a new section of building regulations to deal with mitigating overheating risk, Part S.

Taking a temporary detour from his series of columns on the history of sustainable building and renewable energy, Dr Marc Ó Riain takes a look at Covid-19 from the perspective of Gaia theory, and at the relationship between collapsing ecosystems and the emergence of new infectious diseases.

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.

RIBA has published a report urging the government, local authorities and the wider construction sector to adopt post-occupancy evaluation as standard practice to ensure all new buildings meet intended energy efficiency ratings and provide optimum value for money.

Even though its stunning views lay directly northward, simple design, good detailing and lots of insulation have turned this 1960s semi on the edge of Dublin Bay into a warm and light-filled low energy home.

Leading heat pump manufacturer Panasonic has welcomed the announcement of £2 billion in funding for the UK government's new Green Homes Grant scheme. 

CO² levels in rooms and other enclosed spaces should be used as a proxy for Covid transmission risk, a number of leading experts have said, as the evidence increasingly points towards airborne transmission being a major factor in the spread of the virus.