From the Construct Ireland archives

The rendering industry in Ireland is in a process of change and thus has been the centre of much heated debate between renderers, the meat industry, Irish livestock farmers and the Department of Agriculture and Food.

Independent integrated sustainable design consultant Xavier Dubuisson explains why heed must be paid to a recent study on the threats that misjudged energy upgrade work can pose to indoor air quality.

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.

Conventional wisdom dictates that higher construction costs — for instance to reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions — would either squeeze developers’ profit margins or increase house prices. Tom Dunne, Head of DIT’s School of Real Estate and Construction Economics, reveals how misguided this view could be...

Designing a low-energy public building with passive ventilation and lighting in mind is one thing – making it fit seamlessly into a rural wetland environment is quite another. Lenny Antonelli visited the award-winning Ballybay Wetlands Centre in County Monaghan - a closed-panel timber frame structure designed to sit softly on the surrounding landscape.

Patrick Daly  highlights that the energy refurbishment of our existing housing stock must become a priority. Daly has undertaken a retrospective DEAP case study assessment of an example house and its BER ratings, with staggering results.

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.

With an economy fuelled by a government approach to planning that many people equate to a road building and house building free for all, it should come as no surprise that quality of life suffers

A new development in County Westmeath answers a nagging question about district heating: how to make it financially viable when it services energy efficient buildings. Lenny Antonelli visited a housing estate that combines low energy design with an innovative district heating system and ecological timber frame construction

Lorna Kelly, of the Irish Timber Frame Manafacturers Association, takes a look at IrishTimber Frame