From the Construct Ireland archives

Sligo estate house adds hemp lime extension & renovation with vertical bore-hole heat pump

Many of the opportunities that trees offer for sustainable building are harnessed by a housing development in Ballymahon, Co. Longford which combines timber frame construction with recycled newspaper insulation and wood pellet heating. Adding in solar panels and attention to detail for airtightness, these low energy, low carbon homes reveal a developer who sees a bright future in going green. John Hearne visited the site to find out more.

Box-like, small windows, primary colour renders - there is a common misconception that building to the passive house standard involves sacrificing design freedom for the sake of thermal performance. Not so, argues passive house guru Tomás O’Leary of MosArt and the Irish Passive House Academy, as his selection of architecturally diverse buildings reveals.

The Department of Agriculture’s new Food Safety Centre is a deceptively simple building that combines natural ventilation and lighting with energy efficiency - all on a designed natural landscape that seeks to both boost biodiversity and prevent flooding. Lenny Antonelli visited the County Kildare site to find out more

A typical Irish bungalow built in the early 1990s has been transformed with a green-tinted extension built in the spirit of modernism. Jason Walsh visited Enniskerry, County Wicklow to see how the old and the new were integrated

The Orchard, a new building on the campus of Stranmillis College, a teacher training college in Belfast, has become the first winner of a sustainable planning award organised by the Royal Town Planning Institute alongside a host of other awards. Jason Walsh visited the new building to find out about its green credentials.

In line with a growing consumer demand, the availability of green products is constantly increasing, leading to a situation where product quality need not be compromised in a search for a more eco friendly interior, as Jill Phillips of zero4zero7 interior design explains.

Richard Douthwaite explains how inadequate conventional energy generation is and reveals the potential that combined heat and power & energy service companies can offer.

Richard Douthwaite explains why the bailout may turn out to be a gift to Ireland, and offers some advice for dealing with a default.

Patrick Daly, co-founder of the RiSE (Research in Sustainable Environments) research unit in the DIT has undertaken an in depth study and critique of the current Irish Part L for energy efficiency in dwellings, comparing it in detail to the UK equivalent. The findings raise challenging questions about the Irish standards and methodology and highlight serious shortcomings in comparison to our UK neighbours, permitting substantially higher levels of CO2 emissions from new homes in Ireland than in the UK.