Sorry to drone on about this but again I write about the need to build smaller and better.

I wrote first about it HERE

Then later about it HERE

It may not be understood that the typical rating of a new house constructed in Ireland today has to reach a minimum of an A3 to meet Part L of the Building Regulations. That’s a MINIMUM. For all intents and purposes we’re looking at nigh on Passivhaus standard; what’s missing is the construction standard to airtightnen the building envelope to 0.6ac.

The table below (thanks to Zeno Winkens for flagging this a while back) shows the table of BER ratings against year of construction (source: http://www.seai.ie/Your_Building/BER/Your_Guide_to_Building_Energy_Rating.pdf)

This therefore requires an increased level of insulation and cost in order to meet the standard. The natural outcome in order to meet the standard & cost is to build smaller.

To give you an idea of how house sizes have increased, below is a photo showing 2 models of projects we’ve worked on recently.

The left is a new house and the right is a cottage where a single person (a cobbler) lived in famine times. A one euro coin is shown for comparison purposes: