Technology in the heart of the home

The building industry today is increasingly high-tech. From design tools such as building information modelling (BIM) to off-site construction and the use of total stations on-site, there is now more technology than ever embedded in the construction process.

There is also a bevy of technology today that can simulate and monitor a building’s actual energy performance in the real world.

“This is all starting to get real,” said Jeff Colley, editor and publisher of Passive House Plus magazine, which reports on sustainable construction, and host of the Zero Ambitions podcast.

After years of aiming for little more than minimum regulatory standards, the drive toward higher standards and, with them, lower energy consumption by buildings has been aided by actions from an unlikely quarter: financing.

Access to funding, including private investment funds, is increasingly contingent on meeting energy targets.

“One of the big drivers that we had not anticipated is finance. There’s a bunch of new pressures starting to play on the big Plc developers as a consequence of things like the EU taxonomy [for sustainable activities] and the Sustainable Financial Disclosure Regulation and the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive,” Colley said.

The result is major developers are increasingly taking an interest in building low-energy buildings.

Even changes to accountancy regulations are having an impact, as Scope 3 expands far beyond measuring the greenhouse gases a company puts into the atmosphere with its own activities.

“Some of the bigger developers are starting to worry about actual performance, as opposed to just box-ticking, as a result of Scope 3. In the context of a housing developer, Scope 3 would include the emissions created by a user of a building,” Colley said.

The only physical testing that is really required on Irish homes is airtightness

However, while it is now possible to accurately measure the emissions created by a building’s use, it is not strictly necessary, he said.

“People, some people anyway, get very excited about things like data logging, but monitoring should only serve a function. In most cases, if you know something works and works consistently, then why do you need to continuously monitor things?”

Partly, Colley said, there is a tendency to techno-joy and shiny new gadget syndrome. Indeed, a push for so-called ‘smart homes’ during the Celtic Tiger years has left some houses equipped with outmoded gadgets in the face of the onward march of technology.

“People also get excited about smart homes, but it’s kind of Tomorrow’s World stuff, and if you just build a building, well then you don't need any of that,” he said.

However, technology still has a use: testing that dwellings actually meet the required standards for things like airtightness and energy consumption.

“The only physical testing that is really required on Irish homes is airtightness, and [also] acoustic testing on party walls. In addition, you also have a requirement under building regulation for testing on mechanical ventilation, which is in most new houses, to actually measure the flow rates,” he said.

However, those homeowners who want to monitor the performance of key components of their energy consumption now have access to technology that can do that.

“Mitsubishi, for example, has cloud software for its heat pumps. You can have things like remote control, but the very least you are getting is a measurement of the electricity used and the heat output,” Colley said.