New council homes in Clonmel County Tipperary have been designed to conserve energy.
The housing experiment hopes to identify how an average family can most cheaply live in comfort at a reasonable temperature.
These 63 houses are a living energy usage experiment.
The venture came about as a result of an EEC solar power competition. Dublin architect Jim Barrett, of Delaney McVeigh and Pike, won second prize in the competition for this house design which has now been built in Clonmel. The housing estate was built by Clonmel Corporation.
There is nothing particularly new about these houses which follow a few basic principles for energy efficiency. These include locating the houses so that the biggest windows face the sunny south and the smallest windows point to the colder north. The doors on the north facing side of the house have a draft excluding porch, all the windows are double glazed and there is a double storey conservatory on the southside. The roof of each house has six inches of insulation and the walls four inches. The passive solar energy heat is topped up by a solid fuel room heater. A gas fired boiler runs the radiators.
Architect Jim Barrett explains that the project demonstrations the cost efficiency of conservation methods and the use of sunshine in a passive manner.
The house itself attracts, stores and redistributes the heat.
Twenty two houses include all the energy saving efficiencies from the conservatory to the porch. Others have scaled back features. All of the houses are wired with monitors gathering scientifically based data on energy usage. This will establish the cost efficiency of investing in energy conservation in the homes. Jim Barrett is hopeful that the initial investment will provide a payback to the householder in terms of reduced fuel bills.
The houses with the most features are the most desirable and so Clonmel Corporation held a draw to decide which families got which house.
These houses were built for a bargain £26,800.
County Manager Donal Connolly says that the scheme will help to develop an energy conscious house type that could be replicated on a national basis for both local authority and private housing.
The design was built on the premise that the houses would be connected to the national gas pipeline but this has yet to happen. Donal Connolly is confident that natural gas will come to Clonmel in due course.
An RTÉ News report broadcast on 12 January 1984. The reporter is Michael Ryan.
