House Design Online

Irish Minister for the Environment. Heritage and Local Government, John Gormley T.D.has announced statutory planning guidelines for Sustainable Residential Development in Urban Areas. These Guidelines will act as a blueprint for the future sustainable development of Irish cities, towns and villages in the coming years.

The guidelines don’t, unfortunately make any provision for the involvement of the local community or the householders in the design process.

The guidelines which are a welcome development stipulate that new developments should:

• Prioritise public transport, cycling and walking, and minimise the need to use cars?
• Ensure accessibility for everyone, including people with disabilities.
• Encourage more efficient use of energy and a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
• Include the right quality and quantity of public open space.
• Include measures to ensure satisfactory standards of personal safety and traffic safety within the neighbourhood.
• Present an attractive and well-maintained appearance.
• Promote social integration and provide for a diverse range of household types, age groups and mix of housing tenures.
• Protect, and where possible enhance, the built and natural heritage.
• Provide for Sustainable Drainage Systems?

TO DOWNLOAD THE NEW GUIDELINE – CLICK HERE

An interesting article in today’s Irish Independent by John Kennedy suggests “it’s time for forward thinkers to embrace Ireland’s future economic edge: green energy.

The smartest minds in silicon valley have their eyes and wallets on a bigger prize…electricity!

Tech firms from google to IBM realise that smart energy usage, from homes to cars that can manage their own use of electricity and fuel, and even sell surplus electricity back to the power companies.

Read the article: How 2.0 is set to be bigger than Web 2.0Electricity

To put all of this into context. If we go back two decades and look at where information technololy was at and how it has become an intricite part of everyone’s live’s. Mobile phones were literally unheard of in 1987, yet within a decade they were became an essential accessory for everyone from schoolkids to older folks.

Let’s now try to look forward a decade from now to 2018. Ireland has set a target of 40% renewable energy usage by 2020. Ireland in fairness, being one of the first countries in the world to do so. The technology is already developed to capture, at least this amount of energy from renewables, freely available in Ireland such as wind and wave power. In the 1980′s the technology to develop mobile phones and personal computers was similarily developed. It only took a few short years for that technology to be fully adapted for home users. It is very likely that renewable energy technology will become a domestic feature of every home within the next decade.

All of this is of immense importance for those of you who are thinking about designing your own homes now. Try to design your home with 2018 and even 2028 and beyond. Most of us will still be paying our mortgages well beyond that.  Houses that maximise solar gain and are very well insulated now, will increase the possibility of that home being independent of its energy needs in a very short time.

The Cultivate Centre in Dublin have announced their courses in Green Building for 2009, which will be of interest to anyone designing or planning their own sustainable building for 2009.

The courses cover topics such as basic domestic energy auditing, wind energy, micro hydro and solar PV, solar water heating, green building and many others. Of particular interest is a course entitled “Want to build a house for €20,000 or even less” on Sunday 22nd February 2009. This day course is been given by Andy Wilson of the Sustainability Institute.

For full details on these and other courses please check out Cultivate

Our building is our home, where we live, breath, love, eat, drink, sleep. All too often the building that is our home is the creation of someone else. Most often its just a duplicate or a clone of other houses.  Other houses that don’t necessarily cater for our needs as a family now or in the future. How many of the houses built over the past decade were designed with even the slightest possibility of an energy or financial crisis in mind. How many houses built during  the so-called building boom have made basic provisions such as a downstairs bedroom or bathroom to allow us to live out our lives in our own homes.