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Construction of the houses
The construction of the houses has gone very smoothly. The onsite management team of Oliver Leahy and Alan Harty has resulted in some impressive targets being met.
It was found that the Kingspan Century / Leahy Brothers team could deliver and erect six houses per week quite easily. It should be remembered that these timber frame houses come pre-insulated and with the airtightening seals pre-fitted – this speeds up the building process enormously. With levels of airtightness of 0.1 Air Changes per Hour being achieved in practice, this is indeed a remarkable level of progress in low energy house building in Ireland. It has to be said that the level of site supervision by the Leahy Brothers’ team and the attention to detail by their sub-contractors has paid handsome dividends.
The roofing sub-contractors employed by Leahy Brothers have installed the Sunwarm air solar collectors. Similarly, the Sunwarm air handling unit, together with the Mitsubishi Lossnay HRV unit and all of the ducting and controls have been installed by both the plumbing and electrical sub-contractors to Leahy Brothers. This utilisation of the normal on-site trades has been a huge benefit to the efficient building of the houses. NuTech Consultants trained these personnel in the fitting of the various systems which on completion will be commissioned by NuTech.
In conclusion
This project has gone extremely well because of the ‘build speed’ of this special timber frame construction from Kingspan Century with factory fitted insulation and airtightening seals.
The utilisation of the existing site trades also added to the efficiency. The determination of the builder, the suppliers, designers and the site team to build the house as designed such that it will perform in practice has been a key element of this project.
In order to ensure this teamwork Leahy Brothers with Kingspan Century and NuTech Consultants organised a conference in the Midleton Park Hotel to explain to all concerned what technologies were involved and how each sector was interdependent with the other. This conference was attended by all concerned with the project – the design team, the build team, all of the sub-contractor trades involved, the mechanical services team and very importantly the auctioneers involved in selling the houses. It was also attended by personnel from the Department of the Environment and from HomeBond.
It was felt that, with the attractive design of the houses and the careful integration of the technologies involved, these houses offer the buying public a wonderful opportunity to own a house that is ‘Future Proof’ branded by Kingspan Century against the energy supply and price fluctuation situation.
Proof positive of the success of the approach taken by Leahy Brothers is the fact that all of the houses in this House of Tomorrow Project have been sold. Bill Leahy offered houses with the option that they could choose either the ‘low energy/low CO2’ package as described above or a standard oil-fired heating system. All of the clients opted for the low energy house with the wood pellet boiler as backup. As Bill Leahy says …..’I did have to explain to all of our clients how all of the systems worked and the technologies being used in the houses. It took a lot of talking but, with the high oil prices and concerns over supplies, all of them were most pleased to find we were offering such a well-developed solution being supplied by large reliable companies such as Kingspan Century, NuAire Ltd and Mitsubishi Ireland. Once they saw the benefits they all went for the low energy package on offer’.
