The Irish Green Building Council has just published much-needed research into the interaction of healthy buildings and productivity in offices. This is a field where there have been reports previously of the detrimental impact of sick buildings on productivity, staff retention, staff health, sick days and other associated business costs. Now a comprehensive report is [...]
Initial data on environmental performance from Ireland's first PassivHaus Pharmacy is looking very promising. We know it is only the first two months, but we are so proud of this project we had to share it with you anyway! The pharmacy is currently operating without additional heating or cooling besides the PAUL HRV ventilation system [...]
Post Occupancy Evaluation, POE, is the practice of monitoring buildings once they are handed-over to clients, to check that the environmental performance in use relates to how the building was designed to perform. There is typically a massive gulf between the two. This happens for a variety of reasons, user behaviour being the most common, [...]
The following definition of the European Directive is taken from http://eur-lex.europa.eu/ and the full PDF of the Directive is available there in PDF format at Directive 2010/31/EU (EPBD recast). Article 9 requires that “Member States shall ensure that by 31 December 2020 all new buildings are nearly zero-energy buildings; and after 31 December 2018, new buildings [...]
