Cosy up and save a small fortune in Waterfall

SOME houses look their size, and shout their wares. Others are more subtle, and this Waterfall, Co Cork home fits that low-key description.

Even though it is pretty impressive from a drive-by or cursory glance, there’s so much more to it than meets the eye. Much of what sets it apart will never again be seen, but will repay its investment many times over.

Hard to think of insulation as buried treasure, but that, in effect, is what it is. This 4,800 sq ft, over-basement house on a half acre, has insulation to beat the band, in triplicate in fact, thanks in part to its Fusion steel frame build with integrated ‘waffle-like’ high density foams: with added cosying, it has a whopping 230 mm of insulation to its external walls, while all floors are concrete for thermal mass and sound insulation qualities.

Its owners are Regina Crean and Kevin Hayes, and he’s the project manager with Fleming Construction who built the 60-plus up-market detached houses in Heatherfield (some of which headed into the €1 million league in resales.) He designed this much-larger one-off for himself, and not only does his engineering background shine through, so does his fascination with everything to do with house building, design, heating and services. Kevin’s more than happy browsing DIY stores and builders’ providers in his free time, he admits, and this obsession shows.

He’s particularly strong on what renewable energy products work best in this country: he went for solar panels for water heating, but eschewed costly to install geothermal heating as he’s found, like many others, that the electricity costs for running the pumps more than overrides the savings on any other energy front.

His total annual energy costs come to €800. That’s it. For 4,800 sq ft of space, bedecked with other technological bells and whistles. That’s cool, though the house is hot, his heating goes on in November, and off in March, and even visiting on a cool summer day it is a hot house. He reckons if he’d only upped the window spec a bit more, he’d have a passive-energy house.

This home took 18 months to build and is uncompromising in just about every way.

Although the couple have proud delivery of their first child, they’d designed and built this place for a large family — “peak traffic,” as Kevin quips — but now just gone askew as they’ve bought a farm in Regina’s native north Cork, a once-in-a-lifetime chance to buy a rare farmhouse package.

So, this real labour of love, sweat and tiers (the pun works, this is three levels, plus huge attic) is now up for grabs. Joint agents Niall Cahalane of Cahalane Skuse, and Jeremy Murphy & Associates, have its sale, viewing are going to take time there’s so much to check out, and its asking price is €1.5 million.

“I wouldn’t have built it for anyone for €2m,” says Kevin Hayes of the fully finished package.

The house has a huge kitchen/dining/living area, with family room down a few steps with wall-mounted gas high-efficiency fire in a Spanish stone chimney breast with limestone hearth, while the main living room across the hall has a limestone fireplace with big fire basket.

The kitchen is a one-off, made in solid timber and painstakingly hand-painted, as was the plumbed breakfast island, dresser display and coffee bar. The look is on the contemporary side of classic country, with Aga range setting one tone, then funked up with a steam oven, integrated coffee/cappucino maker and a wine chiller.

Quality woods abound: fascias and soffits are in teak, the elegant cut-string staircase is in mahogany and has delicate non-slip grooves cut into the treads, doors are in chestnut, floors are in walnut, ruby birch, ash, maple and other woods, while architrave and skirting are bespoke, the latter extra high. The divil, again, is in the detail.

Ceiling heights are 9’ for extra airiness, there isn’t a small or mean room (or feature, or finish) in the house, and clever design and scooping back ground levels and banking with white retainers for the basement windows, means even this lower level’s rooms are nice and bright.

You’d hardly know the basement exists, but it has its own separate external entrance, and is laid out with a snooker room, home cinema theatre with drop-down 90” screen and overhead projector, home office, wine cellar for 300 bottles, gym, laundry room and nanny/granny bedroom en suite.

In all, three of the six bedrooms are en suite, and the master bedroom has a large walk-through dressing room with sliding mirrored doors, and a big bathroom beyond with wet-room feature and a great shower. The main bathroom has a 22-jet Jacuzzi bath, with built-in TV screen for those other soaps.

The house has a central vacuum system, as does the 1,000 sq ft detached lofted garage, and on the services front it has CAT 6 future-proof cabling, both broadband and network wired, CCTV with eight camera points wired up, electronic access gates (great timber and wrought iron work), Sky TV distribution to every room, a multi-room audio system and iPod docks, plus PABS phone system. The heating is high-efficiency condenser boiler, operating five zones, and the solar panels are effective enough to give hot water for up to eight people, for 70% of the year. Kevin’s specification for this house lists run to five e-mailed attachments. This man knows his onions.

Outside, too, he and Regina haven’t dropped the ball. The drive and courtyard is cobbled, there are designated storage and recycling areas screened off, the double garage is house-quality, the half acre is fully landscaped and planted with an array of trees and shrubs, and there’s even an outdoor fireplace/barbecue.

“Housing is my obsession,” says Kevin Hayes of his priced-to-sell house four miles west of Cork city’s western suburbs. Whoever ends up here will be the clear beneficiary of his expertise and attention to detail.