Sponsored by
Galway County Council sponsored the energy auditing of ten homes in the county as part of their Climate Action Support Scheme 2019. The brief was for Energy Co-operatives Ireland to appoint a Building Energy Rating auditor to carry out a study of ten homes which represent the typical domestic buildings found in the county and for them to suggested costed measures for improving energy ratings. These audits were carried out by 3CEA who have produced the reports shown here.
The Houses
Click on a house to see the report (BER, Costings and Recommended Actions)
As you can see from the studies, some of the payback periods to carry out all of the recommended retrofits on some of the houses are very long – this means that it may not be cost-optimal to apply all of the measures to the existing houses. But there are measures for all houses that can have a real benefit, and should be taken.
This is a really valuable resource for people not only in Galway, but throughout rural Ireland which shows the energy use that each typical house type uses. It serves as a guide to homeowners as to the likely energy use of their home and the kinds of energy upgrades the can apply to help make their homes more efficient, comfortable, and sustainable for the long term.
The results also show the importance of taking a fabric first approach to works carried out on our homes – even when these works do not fall under the new regulations – i.e. when they don’t fall under the new regulations relating to the > 25 sq meters alterations to the building fabric (that’s the walls and roof) criteria.