Welcome to the archive of Construct Ireland, the award-winning Irish green building magazine which spawned Passive House Plus.
The feature articles in these archives span from 2003 to 2011, including case studies on hundreds of Irish sustainable buildings and dozens of investigative pieces on everything from green design and building methods, to the economic arguments for low energy construction.
While these articles appeared in an Irish publication, the vast majority of the content is relevant to our new audience in the UK and further afield. That said, readers from some regions should take care when reading some of the design advice - lots of south facing glazing in New Zealand may not be the wisest choice, for instance.
Dip in, and enjoy!
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.
There’s rather more to designing a sustainable building than specifying low-embodied energy materials and making sure it will require little energy and maintenance in use. Low water demand and the ability to get the nutrients discharged in the sewage back to the land are important too.
A new extension to the EPA's headquarters in Wexford lives up to the organisation's aim of environmental protection, boasting passive ventilation and lighting, a host of green technologies and a sustainable approach to landscaping.
Semi-state business Bord Gáis have placed green innovation at the centre of their business strategy. As CEO John Mullins reveals, pay as you save and renewable energy will shape the company’s future.
Kevin O’Flaherty’s development overlooking Galway Bay combines impressive energy saving techniques with the sorts of features that buyers of high-spec homes have grown to expect, as John Hearne discovers.
Ireland ’s reliance on fossil fuel sources for electricity generation places the whole country on unstable ground as these limited resources dwindle
As it nears completion, John Hearne visits what is anticipated to be one of the lowest energy buildings in Ireland's recent history.
Four years ago the construction industry was focused on building big and fast — but at the same time, a small team was carefully and ecologically retrofitting a terraced Dublin house on a tight budget according to passive house principles.
Imaginosity, the new children's museum building in Sandyford's Beacon South Quarter development, is getting the Austrian eco-house treatment, combining low energy, modular construction with a plethora of low carbon energy technologies. Jason Walsh visited the site to take a look.
The previous edition of Construct Ireland featured an article by leading green architect Joseph Little analysing the insulated dry-lined blockwork walls typical of many homes in Irish housing estates, looking particularly at moisture movement within the external walls. Continuing on from that article, Little looks at the implications of several ways of insulating houses of hollow block construction.