Sustainable Home

Story telling by a warm, turf burning, open hearth sets the scene of the tradition of old Ireland. Traditions change however, and as wholesome and as cherished a national delight as open turf fires are, they will have to go sooner rather than later. It’s not just the heart of the home changing though, Foxford Woollen Mill blankets and hot water bottles are hardly a standard of living to treasure in a bedroom of a severe winter. With whoever forms the next government, Green Party or no Green Party, looking to build the increasingly fashionable ‘green economy,’ sustainable and ecological considered design will be the means to achieve that.

The Fianna Fail led Government, with significant influence from their junior partners, had begun a process of making grants available to homeowners with a view to retrofitting houses to reduce domestic energy consumption. Creating jobs through new technologies seems a common trend of all elections these days, it was among Barack Obama’s promises in 2008 and our own political parties have followed suit in the current campaign (the less said about Enda Kenny’s attempt to reproduce Obama’s iconic ‘Hope’ image the better however). Taking Fine Gael and Labour’s promises at face value, it’s safe to assume that the new government will move forward with a similar strategy of retrofitting homes to lower their energy consumption rates. It is a dependable means to stem the decimation of construction sector employment, and inevitably create jobs for there are almost none left in that industry. The only hope is that their rhetoric extends to other sectors and creates a meaningful increase in employment, though that’s another debate entirely.

Since the downturn struck in 2008, much has been speculated on Ireland’s means to re-establish itself as a stable economy with the ‘green revolution’ and Ireland’s abundance of renewable energy leading the way in talk, if less so in action. With no oil and minimal reserves of gas (that we gave away anyway) Ireland missed out on the Industrial Revolution and all the prosperity that came with it. However, with the ‘green revolution’ still somewhat in its infancy, Ireland’s abundance of natural resources of wind and tidal energy positions us well to take advantage (assuming no strange paradox emerges wherein we again doom ourselves to unsustainable practice in the pursuit of these sustainable energies).

Few opportunities to engage in sustainable building approaches were taken during the building boom, with most realised ecologically considered designs limited to a small number of specialist practices. There were moments however; Frank Cooney was the project architect for the Green Building in Temple Bar as far back as 1991 at a time when interest in theories to do with global warming and climate change were largely the reserve of kids watching Captain Planet and smelly students called Swampy living in forests where roads were due to cut through.

The Green Party’s influence in government means newly built homes will now have to meet very high standards of sustainability and energy efficiency, and new regulations due out in 2011 will set high targets for energy efficient new buildings. The unfortunate reality of the boom however, is that there are already too many new houses, thus the challenge for the incoming government will be to continue the process of retrofitting Irish homes by maintaining the grant scheme for improving energy efficiency in households.

Frank Cooney is a member of the (Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland) RIAI‘s Sustainability Task Force and has recently completed such retrofitting with the radical transformation of a derelict 19th century farmhouse outside of Kingscourt in County Cavan to the industry’s ‘Passivhaus’ standard. He describes the process by which one could go about retrofitting of an existing dwelling, starting with the cheapest, simple measures through to the more expensive and more severe undertakings.

“The passive techniques will be the cheapest, whereby the envelope of a building is optimised so as not to waste energy. The primary and easiest way to go about making your home more energy efficient for less money is, simply put, to wrap it up warm,” he said. Many Irish houses are poorly insulated, particularly those in city and town centres which, because of their age, will have none at all. The obvious approach here is to dry line the house by fixing insulation to the inside wall, “ the best solution however is to actually fit the insulation externally so that the wall serves as a thermal mass, storing heat for the slow release of heat inside.”

Orientation and cold bridging are critical considerations with new builds, though difficult to fix once a building is complete. Replacing windows is an option however, moving from double to triple glazing, and for those in homes of an historical quality, modern sash windows can be built to better energy efficient standards, so compromises do not have to be made.

The last, and among the easier to achieve, of the passive techniques he mentions is to improve air-tightness. It probably seems obvious; if there’s a draft it will be cold. Taking the principle to a more advanced level by sealing all joints with “specifically designed membranes and adhesive tape will dramatically reduce air-leakage and in so doing further reduce air leakage and the associated heat loss.”

The passive techniques will deal with conserving energy, the focus for a home then will concern how that energy is produced. Heat recovery ventilation can be used to promote air circulation in a now air-tight house, solar panels could be used to heat the water (yes, even in Ireland) and wood chip burners could be used to heat the whole house. The latter will likely be the focal point around which the change comes to Irish homes, no longer the traditional open hearth for chimneys, in the conventional sense, are the chief offenders when it comes to wasting energy in homes. Among the more expensive (but efficient) options in retrofitting, is to remove the fireplace and chimney altogether, and to replace it with a much more efficient balanced flue.

These alterations will improve your home and see it achieve an improved energy rating; however, the policy, despite worthy intention, somewhat misses the point. Newly built homes in Ireland are put through a computer program called DEAP, from which its BER (Building Energy Rating) is arrived at. Frank Cooney’s house in Cavan has an A2 rating, whereas a Victorian stone-built terraced house in Dublin with no insulation is likely to achieve a lowly F or G rating. The curious thing about the DEAP assessment is that it does not take into account the embodied energy of materials, how occupants get are transported to their house or water conservation.

Under the current policy, it doesn’t matter if timber used in construction comes from unsustainable rainforests in Indonesia or an occupant has to drive ten-miles to get to and from their home every day. A Victorian house in south-county Dublin will have less embodied energy due to its proximity to Dart or Luas lines than a rural farmhouse in Cavan which requires cars for transport for example, but this is not considered in DEAP calculations either. These are quite bizarre shortcomings in what is an otherwise worthwhile policy.

The complete lack of intent in regard to water harvesting is most conspicuously odd in its absence considering our abundance of it and the impending introduction of water rates. It is our single most plentiful resource; it seems absolute folly not to take advantage of it.

Whether Ireland could ever be the world leader it aspires to be remains to be seen, but the inevitable inescapable changes are coming. On the Aran Islands a series of electric cars are currently being piloted with a vision towards making the islands completely carbon free – that will mean laying aside the open fire tradition too because burning turf in a conventional hearth is simply not sustainable and domestic turf cutting is legally due to cease in 2012 anyway.

What industry professionals term ‘cold bridging’ is the critical element to avoid in contemporary building design. This is the potential location in the building envelope where insulation does not enclose it, and allows warmth to escape through the building fabric. Chimneys are the chief offender in this regard, and that is why a cherished custom will now have to at least change. The open fire doesn’t necessarily have to go, but chimneys in the familiar sense are falling out of favour. Now, Irish families will sit around a wood burning stove with a balanced flue in highly efficient, potentially carbon-free homes – it seems a much more polished, cleaner vision than the cosy tradition that will not be lost, but rather re-imagined for another generation.