Passive Housing

Staggeringly airtight ecological home in Athenry set to meet the Passive House Institute standard

In the hands of the right architect, meeting the passive house standard needn’t involve compromising on design. Construct Ireland visited a recently certified passive house which shows that a seamless low energy architecture is possible

Martin Murray, chairman of the Passive House Association of Ireland and founder of Martin Murray Architects, explains why the world’s leading energy efficiency standard is on the up in Ireland

On Tuesday the 15th of March a passive house, a house that does not need to be heated, was built a few miles outside of Galway. The brain child of Lars Pettersson of Galway based Scandinavian Homes Ltd, it is believed to be the world’s first standardized and factory made passive house.

Located in Oldtown, a hard to find country town in County Dublin, is a stunning new one-off house that not only manages to bring open-plan living to rural life, but also meets the onerous passive house standards using low impact materials. Jason Walsh visited the site as the house neared completion to find out more, an opportunity that Construct Ireland couldn’t pass up

A striking new house in County Cork proves that meeting the passive house standard needn’t mean sacrificing good design

A new development at Grange Lough, Rosslare, reveals that passive houses can be made Irish – both in terms of what they’re built with, and how they look.

Imagine moving into a house without a heating system – what would you do? Contact the developer and demand they put one in immediately? Call a solicitor and sue the builder? Or sit back and enjoy living in a house, designed to meet your expectations of comfort without any recourse to a space heating system. Jason Walsh met the people behind Ireland’s drive toward the passive house.

Randy Ralston and Mel Cronin aimed for the passive house standard with their upgrade, and though they didn’t quite get there they ended up with a house that produces more energy than it consumes, making it one of the country’s flagship green renovation projects.

While the principles of low energy building apply equally for new build and upgrades, the reality is that htting passive levels becomes much trickier when retrofitting. The Passive House Institute have taken this on board and created a retrofit standard that is ambitious but achievable.