We get frequent requests here at House Design Online for Free House Plans. OK, reality is that if you are looking for something cheap on the internet, you will get just that something cheap! At House Design Online we want to promote the idea of people taking control of the design of their own homes. By engaging in the design proccess, you are saving money but you are also ensuring a higher standard for your build.
There are a few sites out there however that offer “Free House Plans”. One such Stie is FREE GREEN House Plans.
The Beauty of Free Green House Plans is that they offer different options. They have 1,000′s of professionally designed ecological House Plans available for Free. The Free House Plans are sponsored. This is in fact a useful service. It just means that by clicking on any product such as furniture, accessories, building materials – you can find out the name of the supplier. There is a discount arrangement if you chose to purchase any of these products but absolutely no obligation to purchase. They then also have a premium facility where for a nominal membership fee, home owners of architects can download unlimited plans.
Free Green is an “Open Source” venture with benefits to both home owners and people in the design community. Most importantly Free Green promotes the best practivce in ecologiacl architecture
Wednesdays from 7th October to 11th November | 7.00 – 9.00pm
€180 (10% reduction Cultivate and ÉASCA members) | To book call: 01-6745773
This course uses Patrick’s popular book, The Energy Efficient Home, as the core reading. By the end of this series participants will have the confidence and knowledge to make the big decisions in managing a new build or renovation. Dr Patrick Waterfield is a Chartered Engineer and a Fellow of the Energy Institute. He is the author of 14 conference and journal papers and numerous periodical/magazine articles.
Session 1 | Site and Built Form – Microclimate, Passive Solar Design
Session 2 | Construction and Renovation – Materials, Insulation and
U Values
Session 3 | Features and Elements – Windows and doors, extensions,
conservatories, sunrooms and attic conversions
Session 4 | Heating and Ventilation Systems – Hot Water, under floor heating, heat pumps and natural and mechanical ventilation
Session 5 | Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency – Solar thermal, solar PV, biomass, wind, lighting appliances and best use of
daylight
Session 6 | Energy Rating and Wider Environmental Issues – Water Saving, Recycling, Building Regulations and Energy Auditing
Designing and building sustainably is often an afterthought or at most a “consideration” for many people. “We would like to have an ecological house but ….” Solar panels for water heating are sometimes given the same consideration as a sun roof in a car, “would be nice”.
Renewable energy technologies and type of building materials need to be part of the design package. If they get relegated to “add on” status, then they no longer become useful and may well just appear as expensive optional extras.
One of the essential considerations when designing a home for yourself is “future-proofing” at design stage. We may, for example like to plan for a time in our life when we are not as agile as we are now so that we have fewer steps and good space at ground level or consider possibility of changes in lifestyle enforced by the global economic downturn, where prehaps a space could be easily converted to a workspace for home office or for childcare.
Similarily our design needs to enable our family home to be more resilient to a time when we will no longer afford be dependent on fossil fuels to meet our energy needs.
Picture yourself and you family, where you will be in a decade or so from now and to consider what you need to include at design stage now.
House Design has teamed up with “Green Books” to provide a wonderful selection of books covering all aspects of Ecobuilding and Sustainable Living. Green Books are an independent UK publishing company, producing books on a wide range of environmental and cultural issues. From time to time we will be featuring books, which we believe will be useful to our readers. By clicking on the title here you will be brought to the Green Books site in the UK where you can order the books from their website, using the secure store.
A new Social Housing project in Dublin, Ireland is applying rainwater harvesting, solar panels, sheep’s wool insulation and using on-site communal composting as part of a new initiative by Dublin City Council to provide sustainable social housing and replace the homes originally on the site which were demolished in 2005.
In addition, much of the timber from the old apartments was recycled and used again in construction, while two previously used Georgian doors create an archway into the central garden area. Twelve stainless steel water casks are used to collect rain water in the courtyard, while large amounts of sheep wool are inserted into the external walls to provide added insulation.
The energy-saving features are expected to reduce fuel costs by up to 70 per cent and cut CO2 emissions by over 50 per cent.
County Tipperary’s “Little Belfast” is going green in the hope of attracting some new residents.In these challenging times, what with the economic meltdown and global warming, you might find yourself searching for simpler way of life.
Residents of a village in the Republic called Cloughjordan think they have found a way to escape the rat race.
They are building their own eco-village and hope the venture will breath new life into the area.
Do we really need all these new “green technologies” in order to be more energy efficient?
Not necessarily is the view of a group of academics and sustainable energy practitioners who suggest that money spent on micro-renewable energy systems would be put to better on extra insulation and draught-proofing
Speaking in Trinity College at the Trinity Week Academic Symposium “Low Carbon Society: Waste Not Want Not in association with Trinity Haus, it was suggested that attempts to make buildings more energy-efficient by installing expensive “green technologies” have resulted in the rise of “eco-bling”.
The symposium heard some expensive technologies such as photo-voltaic cells, which take energy from sunshine, can take up to 50 years to pay for themselves in saved energy costs. However, photo-voltaic cells often have a useful life of just 20 years, making them effectively “eco-bling”.
In his lecture, “Nega Watts – the antidote to Eco-bling” Howard Liddell of Gaia Architects said preventing heat loss was by definition among the best ways to achieve energy efficiency.
He said he had never seen a heat pump in operation which offered a return as good as three units of energy output for each unit which went in, yet these were regularly advertised as “four units of output for one unit in”.
Photo-voltaic cells which make energy from sunshine offered a 50-year payback, but all too often have a 20-year useful life.
He was critical of new housing schemes which advertised “10 percent of energy from renewables” when research showed clearly the best way to achieve energy efficiency was simply to reduce waste.
This is valuable advice if you are designing your own house. Be wary about what companies out there are trying to tell you. Always ask from where salespeople are getting their figures and check them out yourself.
House Design Online welcome the proposals from the European Parliament that all houses be ‘zero energy’ by 2019.
How practical is it and will full implementation ultimately cause any significant reduction in C02 emissions.
Leonardo Energy, the premier web site delivering a range of virtual libraries relating to electrical energy raises a few questions about the proposal. (more…)
All new buildings to be zero energy from 2019 say MEPs
All buildings built after 31 December 2018 will have to produce as much energy as they consume on-site, says the European Parliament, amending the 2002 Energy Performance of Buildings Directive. MEPs also call for more public investments in energy-efficient buildings. The legislative report was adopted by 549 votes in favour, 51 votes against and 26 abstentions.
By 31 December 2018 at the latest EU Member States must ensure that all newly-constructed buildings produce as much energy as they consume on-site – e.g. via solar panels or heat pumps, says a report drawn up by Silvia-Adriana Ticu (PES, RO). The Commission proposal did not include any specific target dates for zero-energy buildings. (more…)
Passive solar homes are designed to take advantage of local climates by maximizing the energy from the sun to heat and cool the home. In the northern hemisphere, the sun’s path passes through the southern sky on its daily trip west so a passive solar home has the highest percentage of windows is on the south side. The sun warms the home in the winter, and shading devices, such as overhangs, are designed to block the sun in the summer months to reduce the amount of cooling necessary. Passive solar design creates an energy efficient, comfortable home that reduces energy consumption that save money as well as valuable resources.Passive solar design can easily be incorporated into any architectural style given you have the proper site. Such design strategies have been used effectively for hundreds of years. There is a small increase in the cost of construction, but the home has lower annual energy and maintenance costs overall.There are many benefits to passive solar design for the homeowner and the environment. By reducing energy consumption, the homeowner can save money on utility bills and help prevent air pollution from electricity generating plants that burn fossil fuels. Passive solar design elements make a home comfortable year round while bringing in natural light from the increased glass on the southern side. Natural light reduces energy consumption and provides a visual connection to the outdoors.This book provides the fundamentals and components of passive solar design. A collection of floor plans that work in a variety of sites in North Carolina are also included in this book. The passive solar house plans in this book are affordable homes that are less than 1300 square feet and focus on energy efficiency.
So what exactly is a “Passive House” or “Passivhaus”. How do we achieve “passive House Standard”. The concept is relatively new but, what was just a concept a few short years ago is quickly becoming a standard.
Passive house construction should be the only option for new houses being built in any region where houses require heating. Passive House is not however limited to construction in colder climates. (more…)
Given the recent downturn in the building business, much more consideration is being focused on renovationg old houses. In the past few years the idea of renovating an older house was deemed troublesome as builders opted for the “Quick Build” and the “Easy Buck”.
In Ireland we have a rich tradition of renovating older houses as most people had basic construction skills. Many of our thatched cottages date back to the 19th century and evolved over time from one-roomed windowless hovels to the postcard-pretty cottages that dotted the countryside until the last few decades.
Renovating and conserving old houses is not just about the preservation of old houses but also of the preservation of old skills.
With the proper skills and training, old houses can be renovated to the maximum standards of energy-efficiency.
A public lecture will be held on the subject on Thursday March 17th in the Cultivate Centre, Essex Street West, Temple Bar, Dublin starting at 7pm, Cost: €25.00
If you want to discover a bit more about Passive Houses, it might be worth visiting the Ecobuild & Futurebuild Conference whis is taking place in Earl’s Court, London from Tuesday 3rd to Thursday 5th of March 2009.
On the first day of Ecobuild (Tuesday 3 March) BRE will be holding a free PassivHaus seminar in the Thames Lounge.
MORNING SESSION: Creating a PassivHaus culture
Chair Gavin Hodgson, PassivHaus UK, Managed by BRE
10:30 Making a case for PassivHaus: lessons for a crisis – Chris Herring, Director, Green Building Store/Chair, AECB
11:00 PassivHaus in the UK – where are we now? – Oliver Child, Senior Consultant, BRE
11:30 Case study: new materials in PassivHaus design – Howard Liddell, Principal, Gaia Architects
12:00 PassivHaus construction and the skills gap – Malcolm Bell, Professor of Surveying & Sustainable Housing, Leeds Metropolitan University
12:30 Close
AFTERNOON SESSION: There’s no haus like PassivHaus
Chair Justin Bere, Bere:Architects
12:45 Case study: the UK’s first completed PassivHaus – Justin Bere, Bere:Architects
13:15 Case study: PassivHaus is for everyone! – Andrew Bissell, Chair, Blue Property
13:45 PassivHaus retrofit – Mark Siddall, Senior Architect, Dewjo’c Architects Ltd
14:15 Learning from the Swedish experience – Henrietta Lynch, Associate, The Good Homes Alliance
The seminar is free to attend and as there is no pre-booking available for the seminar, attendance is on a first-come-first-served basis. The seminar will be held in the Thames Lounge.
The reality at the moment is that the building of new houses has temporarily in any case ground to a halt. This has of course, implications for the economy but on the other hand offers us with new opportunities.
There has been no better time to focus on bringing our existing housing stock up to a proper standard.
Newer houses are now being built to higher standards of insulation and energy efficiency but if you built or bought prior to 2002, it is likely that your house is less energy efficient and therfore more expensive to run.
On February 8th last Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources Eamon Ryan and Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government John Gormley today launched the national insulation programme for economic recovery. The three-strand insulation programme will cut heating bills for householders, reduce carbon emissions and create thousands of jobs both directly and indirectly over the course of 2009.
The scheme is being administered by Sustainable Energy Ireland (SEI) and to register your interest you must simple call 1850 927 000 or email hes@sei.ie.
Measure covered by the scheme include roof insulation, cavity wall insulation, Internal Wall Dry-lining, External Wall Insulation, High Efficiency Gas or Oil fired Boiler with Heating Controls Upgrade, Heating Controls Upgrade and a Before works and an After works assessment.
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.
Hopefully you were not too badly hit by the worldwide downturn in 2008.
This is a time of year when many will be taking stock of the past year and planning for 2009. There is some good news on the construction front. From the 1st of January 2009 a BER (Building Energy Rating) certificate will be compulsory for all homes being sold or rented in Ireland. This is an important step in “future-Proofing” our housing stock and reducing our dependence on fossil fuels.
As the cost of building new houses continues to drop and as there is now a regulatory framework for better quality, more comfortable and healthier homes, there is now a real opportunity to design and build the house of your dreams. If you are building in 2009, it is important to consider “recession-proofing” you new home. Attaining a higher energy rating will result in lower fuel bills indefinitely. Information on Building Energy Rating
Here’s wishing everyone a Happy and a Cosy Christmas
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.
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.
Anyone interested in finding out more about the concept of the Passive House might be interested in this upcoming event. If you are thinking of building in 2009 and 2010 a visit to Frankfurt in April may well be worth you while, particularly with the availability of cheap flights!
The 13th International Conference on Passive Houses will take place on 17th and 18th April 2009 in Frankfurt in Germany
The Conference will focus on the following themes: Public Initiatives and Public Energy-Efficient Buildings, Non-Residential Buildings, Passive Houses – Apartment Blocks, Innovation from Research and Development: Building Technology and Building Shell, Assessment of Completed Modernisation Projects, Comfort and Health, Financing and Marketing and Housing Industry and Sustainability.
Running side by side with the conference will be the 2009 Public Passive House Exhibition
Date: Friday 17th April – Saturday 18th April 2009
Location: Messe Frankfurt, Hall 5.1
Opening hours: 17th April 2009 9 am – 7 pm
18th April 2009 9 am – 5 pm
Exhibition area: 3.000 m²
Beat escalating energy costs! Passive houses allow for more comfort and lower energy demand: Intelligent solutions for old and new buildings will be on show at the 2009 Passive House Exhibition in Frankfurt:
* Building companies, specialist federations, architecture and engineering offices
* Producers of windows, doors, ventilation systems and insulating materials,
* Providers of building parts, whole solutions, house technology systems and solar companies
They present building components and products which reach the top standards for energy-efficient building through high quality and innovative technology.
* Entrance to the exhibition is free for all visitors.
* Conference and exhibition take place directly next to each other in the Messe Frankfurt.
* A support programme of lectures is directed at conference and exhibition visitors. Here exhibitors can present their products and services.
The exhibition is directed at interested building owners and specialist visitors such as architects, building specialists, planners, energy consultants, producers of building products, companies in the building industry, housing industry and energy providers.Field trips, Sunday 19 April 2008
On Sunday 19 April there will be the opportunity to attend one of five different tours to visit Passive Houses (new buildings and refurbishments).
Start: Conference Main Entrance – Messe Frankfurt
Finish: Frankfurt am Main, Hauptbahnhof (central station)
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