House Design Online

(Source: Cultivate.ie)

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.

Inrtoduction TO Renewable Energy Course
With CREDIT Dundalk

This course is delivered by staff from the Centre for Renewable Energy at Dundalk

Institute of Technology and is directed at those who are interested in becoming familiar with renewable energy and those wishing to install a renewable energy system in their home or small business. (more…)

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.

For More information click these links

Green energies give rise to ‘eco-bling’ – Irish Times May 14, 2009

Trinity Week Academic Symposium

Trinity Haus

Venue: The Organic Centre in Rossinver, Co Leitrim

Course Date: 24 May 2009
Instructor: Peter Cowman
Course Fee: €90.00

Peter will explain various techniques including economics, planning, passive solar design, alternative energy systems, the use of timber and other natural materials as well as self build.

Peter is the originator of the “living architecture” concept and believes that “our homes engage us on a physical as well as an emotional level”.

Special attention will be paid to ‘mortgage-free housing options’

For More Information. Click THE ORGANIC CENTRE

Good news from Sustainable Energy Ireland (SEI) that minister Eamon Ryan has announced a scheme to promote micro-generation. These scheme will enable farm and home owners to sell electricity that they generate back to the grid.   Among the measures is a guaranteed price of 19 cent per kilowatt hour of electricity produced. This competitive feed-in tariff will apply to the first 4,000 micro-generation installations countrywide over the next three years. Eligible installations include:

• Small scale wind
• photovoltaic
• hydro and
• combined heat and power

The scheme is a major initiative in reducing our dependence on imported fossil fuels.

Any who is designing their house at the moment should make provision for the installation of a micro-generator early on in the process.

It is possible with the proper design to build a house which uses less energy than it produces.

FOR MORE INFORMATION ON THE SCHEME CLICK HERE

To see a news item on the scheme click below

RTE NEWS

The second Renewable Energy Summit will take place in, Croke Park Convention Centre, Dublin between 24-25 March 2009

THE 2020 target for renewable energy has been increased to 40 per cent as part of the government’s strategy for a “green economy”. Taoiseach Brian Cowen said recently that the government’s aim was to deliver a ‘New Green Deal’ that focused on energy efficiency and the investment in clean and renewable technologies.”

“As one of the most fossil-fuel dependent countries in the world, we must prepare for a future when the prices and volatility we have recently witnessed become the norm”he said.
Improving the environment and energy security is one of the five “action areas” in the plan to rejuvenate the economy and attain sustainable growth.

SPEAKERS INCLUDE

Dr Wolfgang Palz, Chairman, World Council For Renewable Energy (WCRE)

Folker Franz, Senior Adviser, Environmental Affairs and Energy

Katrina Polaski, Head of Renewable Energy, Sustainable Energy Ireland

Gerry Wardell, Director, Codema

Lawrence D Staudt

Dr Richard Toll, Economic & Social Research Institute

For more information, or to book a place click RENEWABLE ENERGY SUMMIT 2009