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Carrigaline passive house |
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Tuesday, 15 November 2011 |
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A striking new house in County Cork proves that meeting the passive house standard needn’t mean sacrificing good design, while the dwelling also boasts an innovative infra-red heating system, green materials, plus a unique approach to using climate data in low energy construction.
Sally O’Leary says that when a site became available near the site of an old family home, she couldn’t pass up the opportunity to buy it. She’d been looking for a site to build on with her husband John. “We always wanted energy efficiency, I think nowadays that’s something that people have to do," she says.
The spent a few years trying to get planning permission before turning to Cork-based Wain Morehead Architects. For Sally, it was important their design showed respect for their site — an awkward, sloping patch of land overlooking a local river.
Energy efficiency was important to the O’Learys, but architect John Morehead suggested taking things further and aiming for the more onerous passive house standard. “Passive was a complete dream,” Sally says.
A large folding triple-glazed wall on the first floor divides the main living space from the porch
Building envelope
The couple wanted a timber frame house, but as the design envisaged the house partially nestling into the ground, using timber wasn’t structurally feasible for the lower floor. John Morehead originally planned to use concrete block with external insulation here, but contractor Twomey Construction suggested going with insulated concrete formwork (ICF) instead.
“It’s very accurate,” the company’s Brian Twomey says of ICF. “You can get it very precise.” He’s also drawn by the fact that the structural, insulation and airtightness components of the wall are built in one system by one type of tradesperson.
Killarney-based Thermohouse supplied the ICF system — essentially two vertically-stacked walls of polystyrene block, built up like Lego, with concrete poured between. The walls have a 100mm service cavity on the inside — this is insulated with Rockwool and lined with Fermacell board, a mixture of gypsum, recycled paper and water.
Architect John Morehead patented a unique heating system for the house, with localised infra-red emitters using rectangular ceramic elements that are manufactured in west Cork, such as the one seen here at the centre of the bulkhead on the top left
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