Passive Housing

Flight of the phoenix

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Beauty is only skin deep, or so goes the cliché, but is there more to 'grace' in a building than its exterior? Jason Walsh visited Rathnew, County Wicklow, to see how an ordinary office building was being transformed into a paragon of sustainability and spoke to two of the building's designers and occupants, architect Tomás Ó Leary and engineer Mark O'Brien

Passive dynamics

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For a building to truly be considered a passive house a vast range of criteria need to be met, as Niels Bjergstrom, founder of Zero-Carbon Solutions Ltd reveals.

Opinion

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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

Green grocers

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Can a supermarket be green? Tesco's new store in Tramore, County Waterford suggests that, at least in terms of the building it’s housed in, the sky’s the limit. Jason Walsh visited a building which meets passive house standards and demonstrates impressive attention to sustainability throughout its design.

Marketplace + companies featured in this article

Unipipe

Unipipe are specialist distributors of heat pumps, underfloor heating and renewable low-energy heating systems.