The retrofit and extension of a run-down semi in Cork shows just how radically a typical Irish home can be transformed with a skilful retrofit — and why, if your budget is limited, upgrading the building fabric should be your first priority.

The dramatic conversion of 22 old bedsits on the north side of Dublin City into 11 passive-grade apartments offers an inspiring example of how to retrofit inner city housing while radically improving quality of life for residents.

Towards Zero Energy Ltd has just completed eight months monitoring of five dwellings in the Dublin region that it upgraded to A1 BERs last year under SEAI’s Deep Retrofit Pilot Programme. The dwellings were typical suburban 1950s to 1970s two-storey, semi-detached/terraced houses and all were three or four bedrooms in size.

Leading low energy retrofit contractor Encon has teamed up with Waterford Credit Union to offer low interest loans to anyone thinking undertaking of a home energy upgrade, in a bid to help develop the retrofit market in the region.

Vet Chris Copeman was so meticulous about the deep retrofit of his home near the village of Frodsham that he decided to train as a passive house consultant and project manage the build himself. The result? A certified passive house created on a surprisingly low budget.

A new free-to-use online tool aims to map the energy performance of Europe’s buildings, with the goal of helping to stimulate large-scale deep retrofit, writes project manager Michael Hanratty.

A 1960s cottage in Tipperary is one of the first projects to be deep retrofitted this year by Sola Energy Solutions under Tipperary Energy Agency’s popular SuperHomes scheme, which aims to make it easy for homeowners to undertake a deep energy upgrade by managing the entire retrofit process.

The government's new climate action plan does not show the level of committment needed to really reduce Ireland's carbon emissions, says Irish Green Building Council CEO Pat Barry. 

With obsessive attention to preserving and restoring the original fabric of these two Victorian townhouses, and a commitment to shunning petrochemicals and using only natural materials, could this be the most wildly ambitious and sustainable passive retrofit ever undertaken in the UK?

Situated in a stunning location in the west of Ireland, between Galway Bay and the limestone hills of the Burren, this project provided a complex challenge in three parts: deep retrofit an old cottage into a yoga studio, reinvigorate its original extension, and build a new barrel-roofed passive-grade extension — then make it all work together as one unified home and workspace.

Green Building Store has published a free technical briefing on its award-winning radical retrofit of a traditional Pennine farmhouse & barn in West Yorkshire, which developed innovative solutions for hard-to treat buildings with solid walls.

The Welsh assembly has voted through new legally-binding carbon emissions targets for the country. The targets bind the country to reduce emissions by 80%, relative to 1990 levels, by 2050.

The revelations in Passive House Plus issue 24 about failed external insulation retrofits in the Fishwick area of Preston have been followed up by UK national media, putting pressure on Ofgem, the electricity and gas regulator, to make more effort to help those affected.

PAS 2035 follows high profile retrofit failures under government schemes

In the classic story of the three little pigs, the big bad wolf may have blown down the first little piggy’s house of straw with consummate ease — but he wasn’t reckoning with this pioneering, energy bill-shredding Suffolk project, the UK’s first load-bearing straw bale passive house

The imperative to engage in evidence-based deep retrofit grows by the day. With the UK government dragging its heels, Peter Rickaby finds signs of hope in local initiatives, and in burgeoning Irish efforts.

The default answer when you want to do pretty much anything to a listed building is ‘no’. The default assumption if you want to achieve the Enerphit standard for retrofit is ‘tackle everything’. So how on earth do you retrofit a listed building to within a whisker of the Enerphit standard — with the blessing of the conservation officer?

Old buildings are tricky to upgrade – especially if external insulation’s not allowed. Utilising a combination of cutting edge building physics and a carefully selected palette of insulation materials, one Victorian stone building has been upgraded to the Passive House Institute’s Enerphit standard, slashing heating demand by 90%

At SEAI's 2018 deep retrofit conference, there are signs that action to overhaul Ireland's outdated, inefficient building stock is gradually moving forward 

Built in 1850, this home in Dartmoor national park would have relied on local timber supplies for heating until the advent of widely-available central heating. One passive house-flavoured retrofit later, it’s back to its wood-burning roots – only this time with much less wood use, and much higher comfort.

In 2014, one couple decided to give up life in a van and convert an old newsagents in Shrewsbury into a very small low energy home, using the principles of the passive house standard as their guide. So how did it work out, and what is life really like in such a small home?

Simultaneously tackling fuel poverty and climate change requires drastic action on deep retrofitting the existing housing stock – and fast. Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown’s deep retrofit and renovation of Rochestown House may be Ireland’s most significant retrofit to date – a fact reflected in the project picking up the sustainability award at the 2017 Irish Architecture Awards.

This ambitious experimental retrofit of a Victorian barn high in the hills of West Yorkshire has turned a cavernous, draughty space into a comfortable low energy period home — and cut its heating bills by over 80%.

If the reduce, reuse, recycle mantra has a built embodiment, it’s arguably the recently completed Rediscovery Centre in Ballymun, Dublin – a 1960s boiler house for a much maligned early district heating system that’s been transformed into a sustainability education centre, and that makes use of a remarkably large palette of green materials and sustainable technologies.

Architecture practice vHH has announce that it is planning to adopt the passive house standard on a three-storey extension to the Grade 11 listed Leicester Cathedral, which is due to start on site in July 2019.

On 13 June, in an address about retrofit policy to the joint conference of the Sustainable Traditional Buildings Alliance and the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, I suggested that the UK retrofit industry is dangerously incompetent, and that is why we need to implement the Each Home Counts industry review. Little did I know that in less than twenty-four hours those words would come back to haunt me in the most horrific way, writes Dr Peter Rickaby.