From the Construct Ireland archives

Designed and patented by Irish firm NuTech Renewables, solar enhanced ventilation aims to bring big energy and cost savings to the retrofit market by combining solar and ventilation technologies. NuTech’s Bill Quigley explains how it works.

The government is aiming to energy upgrade one million buildings by 2020, but huge investment will be needed to reach that goal as finance expert Jack O’Keeffe of Larchmont Consulting explains

If you’re not assessing the environmental performance of your suppliers and their products, it’s rapidly becoming a case of “caveat emptor”. Many of the world’s biggest companies are now buying green, and the Irish government is about to follow suit. Ignore the issue and you put your company at a competitive disadvantage, argues Brian O’Kennedy, managing director of Clearstream Solutions

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

Do termites apply building science better than humans? Award winning architect Sean Harrington takes a characteristically left-of-brain approach to our international feature, leading to some humbling lessons.

Few concepts in sustainable design have caught on like the passive house. Since the construction of the first passive house in Germany in 1990, an estimated 15 to 20,000 houses have been built to what is arguably the world’s leading low energy building standard. Drawing from his experience in sustainable building since the early 1980s, Bill Quigley of NuTech Renewables posits an alternative approach.

Heat recovery ventilation, a technology that has become a standard building application in Scandinavian countries, is rapidly gaining recognition in Ireland as a solution to both problems.

With the age of cheap and abundant fossil fuel energy coming to an end, district heating, where a development is heated from a single, centralised heat source is becoming an increasingly attractive option due to the capital and running cost, efficiency and environmental benefits it can offer. Paraic Davis of Davis Associates mechanical and electrical engineers explains why district heating has become a viable and increasingly popular choice in Ireland.

An energy conscious renovation and extension in south Dublin breathes new life into a typical semi detached home — the house is now wrapped with external insulation and boasts breathable and ecological materials too.

Ireland has been waiting for a green procurement plan in the public sector for two years. Jason Walsh looks at what the plan should include and why it is needed, now more than ever, and with sustainable building at its core.