A lot of people may choose to remember this past summer as being bookended by the BREXIT vote and the Olympics. Here in Ireland we had some reasonable weather, three olympic medal winning heros to welcome home (two from Cork……ahem !) and more recently a pretty awkward coporation tax issue to contend with.
While all this was going on I was fortunate enough to witness some fantastic individuals and organisations work during this time to promote a building standard that will have a transformative effect of societies everywhere. This building standard is called Passive House. It is 25 years old and hails form Germany (but was developed by an Austrian physicist and a Swedish professor). It is a rigorous energy and comfort standard. It is evidence based and provides quality assurance as part of the mix. This building standard offers the quite unbelieveable win-win of assuring a more comfortable & healthy built environment while at the same time dramatically reducing CO2 emissions.
From my point of view this past summer was bookended by two events which I believe made an important contribution to the debate regarding building standards in Ireland. The first was jointly hosted on 2nd June by English sustainable architect practice – Architype – and Cork based timber frame manufacturer – Cygnum. It was held at The Lighthouse cinema in Smithfield and the theme for the night was ‘Passivhaus Uncovered’. The second event, entitled ‘Delivering Cost Effective Passive House in Ireland’, was hosted by the Passive House Academy on 25 August at the LexIcon in Dun Laoghaire.
Both events had to contend with (un)seasonal high summer sunshine and the annual desertification of Dublin for the summer holidays. Notwithstanding this, both events drew great crowds and served up some compelling presentations.
What impressed me most about each event was their speaker line ups. From my experience of Passive House events and seminars they do have an inclination to be the redoubt of architects and building science boffins. That’s ok, I can understand why that is the case. However, for the message of the Passive House building standard to be communicated to a wider audience it needs other industry actors and stakeholders to come to the fore. This is where these events succeeded.
The Architype team recounted their experience of building the Oak Meadow Primary School to the Passive House standard in the UK. They were incredibly frank and open. Their technical rigour and attention to detail was incredible for these projects. Mark Smith from Cygnum was incredibly humble in describing some of the challenges on the project (mostly airtightness). However, it was the story that the project quantity surveyor, Jerry Thomas of SmithThomasConsult, had to tell that really captured my attention.
First, he spoke about mindset. This is cleary where it all fails or succeeds. I personally felt that this was one of the most important presentation slots that I had the good fortune to be at. This QS got creative……..two stage tender process, early stage value engineering, supply chain involvement, cost planning and design optimisation, open book negotiation. The team succeeded in delivering this new school to the Passive House standard on budget. We need to take real good care of Jerry Thomas. This is a story that needs to be retold.
Jerry expanded his presentation to include an overview of the cost of school building to national codes in the UK versus the Passive House standard. Its a tricky business presenting comparative costs but Jerry provided some compelling data to suggest that the Passive House standard can be delivered at an extra over cost of 2-4%.
The above assertion is important because Architype have demonstrated, through monitoring research, that practically none of the schools built to UK code comply with the recommended internal environment for optimum learning outcomes – e.g. CO2 levels, temperature levels etc – while those built to the Passive House standard do. I would dare say that the same is true in an Irish context and we should take note.
The Architype event was rounded off by a compelling presentation from Emma Osmundsen, Housing Development Manager for Exeter City Council and Chartered Building Surveyor. Emma hit us for six when she articulated the Exeter City Council investment criteria for housing development – The Triple Bottom Line. Exeter City Council charge themselves with delivering on Financial, Social and Environmental responsibilities with their housing investment decisions. Emma alliterated these responsibilities to Profit, People, Planet. Her most impressive statement on the night was;
“Passive House gives a cast iron guarantee that assets will perform as planned”
This is testament to the evidence based data that underpins the Passive House standard. If a UK local authority can rationalise a business case for Passive House why can’t we do it here ?
The workshop hosted by the Passive House Academy at the LexIcon in Dun Laoghaire was a far more home grown affair. Considering that it was a damn fine day in Dublin and that Annelise Murphy was being given a civic reception across the road it was pretty astonishing to see the audience packed to the rafters in dlr LexIcon.
The suite of presentations was exceptional and well conducted. Tony Bamford, Irish Planning Institute Council Member and Convenor of the Private Sector Committee was equanimous with the stopwatch.
There were two builder/developers on the speaking panel, Durkan Residential and Michael Bennet Construction. Both of these builder/developers have gone ahead and committed their respective futures to constructing to the Passive House standard. It is visionary and brave of them to do so. There is no planning gain, they must undertake compliance to national building regulations and the Passive House standard. The must manage the upskilling of their teams which in the case of Durkan residential meant making BIM part of their overall strategy
Both builder/developers related some interesting information from their experience of constructing to the Passive House standard. While they use differing construction methods both report that build times have reduced building to Passive House standard compared to national regulations. Michael Bennet Construction report construction times of 12 weeks for a pair of Passive House semi-detached houses versus 14-15 weeks for conventional standard houses. They also say that client satisfaction rates are higher and that snags are minimal on completion. Durkan Residential also see a future where technological innovation will see home owners become ‘pro-sumers’ of electricity. This will lead to less risk for borrowers which translates into lower mortgage rates.
And here’s the sucker punch, both builder/developers are building to the Passive House standard for no additional cost.
There was some criticism from the audience that this had been achieved through value engineering at Michael Bennett Construction. Value engineering is standard practice in almost all construction projects. It is used when you want to ensure that your customer gets the critical value from the project without compromising project costs. In this case the extra over cost was less than 2% prior to value engineering.
The final speaker at the workshop was Tomás O’Leary’s former school teacher. She graciously agreed to speak of her experience of buying and living in a home built to the Passive House standard (Madeira Oaks, Co Wexford). Her criteria when looking for a new home were that it needed to be affordable, comfortable and have as little negative impact on the environment as possible. She described her purchase of her new Passive House home as a “leap of faith” despite all of her research. One thing she did confirm is that her house was built within 3 months !
Since she has only been in the house since April she couldn’t comment too strenuously on the affordability of the house. However, she signed off her presentation with a great quip. She self-assuredly commented that though she had read extensively on Passive House she failed to see mention of the one thing that was most obvious to her:
“My red wine is always at the perfect temperature”
What I found most interesting about her presentation is that she prefaced it by saying that she was the only amateur on the panel that evening. It was the first time I’d ever listened to a person that lived in a Passive House speak at a building professionals forum. This is what it is all about. The people that use the buildings we construct are what its all about. All of our skills, talents and ambitions need to combine to serve them. They will determine what really defines value for the money, comfort and affordability whatever we as building professionals think.
However, there is a difficulty with this proposition. There is a knowledge gap. Those who use the buildings we construct lack the necessary awareness and knowledge to make informed decisions or demand change. As Patrick Durkan commented, the industry suffers from poor branding.
The world relies on progress. While this is a truism it is somewhat at odds with how we behave as individuals or as a society. You see progress requires a change in the order of things and this is always difficult to achieve in practice. There is a famous quote by Nicolo Machiavelli on change;
There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. For the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order, this lukewarmness arising partly from fear of their adversaries … and partly from the incredulity of mankind, who do not truly believe in anything new until they have had actual experience of it.
The change to the Passive House building standard will benefit people, the environment and the economy. Ireland is part of an international vanguard in a revolution in building standards and should capitalise on this. While resistance to such a transformative change is to be expected I believe that there is now ample evidence to sway the naysayers and ultimately serve our society with our built environment.