Crosshaven, Co. Cork
Executive Summary
This Passive House build was located on a very tight site in Crosshaven, Co. Cork. The house was built using the Thermohouse Passive building system installed by a Thermohouse construction team. In addition to providing an airtight thermal envelope to achieve the rigid Passive Haus standards, an added benefit was the ability to move the lightweight modular elements around the narrow site as necessary.
Challenges
This house needed to be extremely well insulated and airtight in order to achieve the rigorous requirements of Passive Haus standards. Furthermore, the proposed house was situated on a very tight site on a steep hill.
How Thermohouse Helped
For this design, Thermohouse builders utilised their passive standard building system to achieve a low energy passive home.
All ground floor walls built using the ThermoWall ‘Passive Gold’ ICF wall blocks. For the basement structure, the 3 retained sides of the basement walls were built using our 350mm ICF basement block and the exposed rear elevation of the basement was built with our 400mm ‘Passive Gold’ ICF block.
The ground floor, which capped the ICF basement structure was built using our 160mm insulated flooring panel – Thermofloor. The ThermoFloor panels were also utilised to form an insulated concrete flat roof deck.
Finally, the external balcony at the rear of the property was constructed using our 160mm Thermofloor supported on galvanised steel frame.
Upon completion of the house, the homeowner has reported that the air leakage test undertaken recorded 0.58 air changes per hour (ACH). The Passive House standard requires airtightness so that there will be less than 0.6 ACH. Therefore, the house in Crosshaven qualifies under Passive house standards.
DL Group Consulting Engineers
About: DL Group is an Engineering Consultancy company whose services include Planning, Design, Surveys, Fire Certificates, Project Management and Subsidence Design Solutions. They design and manage commercial, retail and domestic projects.
| KeyPoints | |
| Location: | Crosshaven, Co. Cork |
| Building Type: | Single storey over basement detached house |
| Size: | 250m2 |
| System Components: |  thermowall  thermoboard  thermofloor |
“I recently completed a self-build in Cork, and after a lot of research on build methods, I ended up using Thermohouse ICF system for the build. From start to finish it was a please to work with the thermohouse team. Both the technical / design team based in Killarney who were always on hand to change / support the build to the exceptional site team who built the structure.
A number of factors were key in both deciding to use the Thermohouse system and team:
- Thermohouse ICF system far exceeds building regulations and ensures a much easier system to meet passive standards for both U value and airtightness (without using any airtightness membrane we hit 0.57 m3/(m2·h) @50 Pa on a preliminary)
- Their system is far superior to any other on the market with a full 400mm ICF block and various other variations to suit retaining wall structures etc.
- An in-house technical / design team who can support any issues that crop up during the build (which inevitably do on any build). Turnaround time is therefore very quick with no delays to construction
- A very experienced site team who built a 260sq meter structure with part below ground in under 2 months over the winter months (including Thermopanel roof and floor system)
Overall a very impressive system and team to deliver a top class building solution.”
– Homeowner
