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Featured Article
| EnerPHit |
While the principles of low energy building apply equally for new build and upgrades, the reality is that htting passive levels becomes much trickier when retrofitting. The Passive House Institute have taken this on board and created a retrofit standard that is ambitious but achievable.
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Official magazine of Easca  |
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Rise of the passive house |
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Wednesday, 01 February 2012 |
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Page 1 of 20
It could be a reflex response to the shockingly poor construction
standards that came to define Ireland’s boom years, but the world’s
leading low energy building standard is starting to thrive in Ireland.
As the several case studies following this article reveal, a groundswell
of Irish clients, designers, contractors and manufacturers are starting
to recognise the opportunities available in becoming early adopters of a
standard destined for exponential global growth
Irish passive house pioneer Tomás O'Leary has called for at least one Irish local authority to make the ultra low energy passive house building standard a minimum requirement for all new build.
"We could generate fantastic enterprise out of the passive house standard if somebody had the imagination to introduce at an official level," he says.
O'Leary has called for at least one local authority to follow the example Fingal County Council set in 2005, when it introduced requirements for energy efficiency and renewable energy in new domestic dwellings – requirements that were well ahead of national standards at the time.
"What I'm calling for is some far sighted local authority out there to grab this by the scruff of the neck," he says. O'Leary says such a move would help make Ireland an international pioneer in low energy construction.
MosArt’s Art McCormack describes the minutiae of passive house at the FÁS passive house tradespeople course in Finglas
For those unfamiliar with it, passive house (or passivhaus) is a German standard of energy efficiency in buildings. Despite the name, it applies to all buildings - not just housing. If a building is certified as passive, it's essentially so well insulated and airtight that it doesn't require conventional central heating. Instead it’s mechanical heating needs can be met mainly through heat recovery ventilation, which extracts heat from outgoing stale air and uses it to pre-heat incoming fresh air.
In order to meet the standard set by the German-based Passive House Institute, a building must meet strict criteria: for example it must either have a space heating demand of less than 15 KwH/m2/yr or a heat load of 10 W/m2, while its airtightness can be no more than 0.6 air changes per hour at 50 pascals pressure.
O'Leary built the first certified passive house in Ireland, and indeed in all of the English speaking world, in 2004. He has since become renowned as Ireland's leading passive house guru. O'Leary first heard about the passive house concept at SEAI's See the Light conference in 2002.
"I was sitting in the auditorium listening to this Swedish architect talking about passive house," he says. "And I actually left my seat and phoned my wife and said, 'we're going to build a passive house.'"
Since then Ireland has become a global centre of passive house design and construction. “Passive house is easy to adapt and very cost-effective to build in Ireland’s relatively mild climate, a fact that has helped Ireland to become one of the first nations with a strong and dedicated passive house community,” says physicist Wolfgang Feist of the Passive House Institute, and one of the standard’s originators. “Since Tomás O’Leary built the first Irish passive house, Ireland has made big steps in using passive house for sustainable development and has even played a role in the standard’s further development in a variety of refurbishments, as well as with the construction of the first passive house supermarket [Tesco in Tramore, Co Waterford].”
The Passive House Association of Ireland is also celebrating its first year in existence. The association is a representative body for all those in the passive house construction industry, and is actively seeking interested parties to get involved. “Passive house design is one of the few areas of construction that defies the current economic times,” says its chairman, architect Martin Murray. “We believe that passive house design offers great prospects for international marketing, job creation and job protection, and at present Ireland is undoubtedly a market leader within the international passive house community.”
Ireland now has the second highest number of certified passive house designers in the world. "I'm really proud of that achievement," says O’Leary, whose Passive House Academy trains designers. "My hope is that these people [certified designers] will benefit in terms of their job prospects."
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