Retrofitting: See how two Cork houses got a new lease of life

It took over €40,000 of a spend for the Tobin family, €15,000 of that on insulation alone, but proof positive that a 1960s home can run at 20C on a primary heating system.

Deep energy renovation (yanking our energy performance into the high BER Bs and As) is tough enough. Dealing with the tender peculiarities of a seriously older home can make this journey an even greater challenge. The work to insulate a house, tighten it against uncontrolled air exchange, and decarbonise the heating system as fully as possible, has become a valued part of saving these precious buildings for this and coming generations.

We spoke to two families who are living the dream of a characterful house in the Irish countryside.

Marrying the best of direct labour, great trades, new technologies, and a creative, hybrid approach to energy performance, they have boldly and successfully addressed the need to future-proof their older builds.

HOUSE 1

The Tobin family of Lissarda: Sarah, Chloe, Kayleigh, Danny and Valerie outside their newly renovated 1960s farmhouse, which after eight months of work, now boasts an enviable A1 BER rating to include an ASHP by Daiken and photovoltaic power to help run their largely all-electric home in times of high electricity unit prices. The grant aid from the SEAI for heat pump installation has recently increased to as much as 6,500.

Danny Tobin lives in a mid-century built farmhouse in Dunmarklun, Lissarda, County Cork, with his wife Valerie, and daughter Chloe. He’s quite sure that they were regarded as being completely mad to move from a comfortable four-bed semi-D in Carrigaline, to a mobile home sheltered in a shed, in the middle of the countryside at the start of a global pandemic.

“I grew up in West Cork and always wanted to move back to the countryside,” Danny explains. “But I still need to be near the city for work. I trained as a cabinetmaker in England and always wanted to set up my own hobby workshop. That requires space. Valerie is from the city so wanted to be near her family in Bishopstown. We raised three brilliant daughters in Carrigaline, but as they started to move out and the town became more and more congested, I wanted to leave. We found this place near Lissarda which is just twenty minutes from Bishopstown, and yet only one hour from my homeplace in west Cork.”

The Tobin family home, Lissarda, County Cork. PV panels have been added to the building, and current grant aid for photovoltaic stands at a maximum of €2,400.

Danny works as a kitchen fitter for Kube kitchens in Cork, so was able to take on a considerable amount of the work himself, calling on good friends and contacts in the trades. The couple had renovated two houses in Carrigaline.

“So we knew what we were letting ourselves in for,” Danny adds.

Part of their dream was to be mortgage-free, he explains, and they have achieved their goal with a small amount of personal debt and a largely finished home.

“The house was built around 1960,” he continues. “It’s a typical farmhouse design with five windows and a central door at the front. A small two-storey extension was added at the back for a utility downstairs loo, and a main bathroom upstairs, coming to 91 square meters. It’s built block on the flat, which is very unusual, but very strong even though it looks like a traditional farmhouse.”

The Daikin air source heat pump running the home of Danny Tobin. 'Our ESB bills are low, between €120 and €150 every two months.' 

The family benefitted from the work of a skilled, previous owner. The floors had been dug out and Kingspan insulation set into the floor. External (wrap) insulation had proceeded and the roof had been replaced. The house was still a shell, but Danny describes the heavy-lifting as well underway when they arrived on site.

“It took us nine months from buying the house to when we were able to move in,” Danny explains. “I did most of the work myself, all taping and jointing, tiling, flooring, first and second-fix carpentry work, painting, etc. The biggest challenge was that the original stairs was very poorly designed so the first landing was very low and the four doors in the downstairs hall were kept low to match as a result. I’m six foot two so I had to replace the stairs and raise the doors to a standard height. The windows were replaced with Munster joinery UPVC Passiv tilt’n’ turn.”

So, with the structure insulated, what about heating? The family utilised the SEAI grant system, which had also been accessed by the previous owner for insulation measures.

“We decided to go with a Daikin air to water system from Energywise (energywiseireland.ie) with aluminium rads throughout. The total price was €12,800, and we availed of an SEAI grant of €3,500. The first step in this process, is to get a technical BER done to determine if the property is suitable. This cost €460, but we got a €200 rebate on that from the SEAI. The rules on that BER are very strict and it’s much more detailed than a normal BER as a property must fall within a set limit. We were lucky as some of the work had already been done. At the end you have to get another BER done which cost us €280 but we were very happy with the resultant A3 rating.”

“This proved to be a very long process. With the pandemic and the trouble trying to get tradesmen to come, it took us seven months in total, but it was well worth it. Our electric bills are low, between €120 and €150 every two months. We have only been living in the house for eleven months now and that is for everything. Recently we decided to add solar panels as I came across a good offer that allows you to pay them off over ten years. A basic seven-panel system costs us €20 per month after paying the €1,800 grant from the SEAI as a deposit to PV Solar. We had a BER carried out as part of the grant process and now have an A1 rating.

Ventilation is extremely important in any deep-retrofit. A vintage, leaky house having undergone sealing and higher insulation levels, will tend to keep the moisture naturally created inside the home (formerly wicked away through draughts and a gaping structure with cold bridging). Danny found he had to return to the ventilation issues as his sealing and insulation improvements took positive effect.

“We now have a passive ventilation system as we found that the vents in the windows were not enough to keep them condensation free during times of high humidity. It’s a very simple whole house system from Nuaire that was easy to install and very cheap to run. We are very happy with the way the house is performing overall. We have a small 5kW sealed stove in the front room that literally heats the whole house in the winter evenings only burning a very small amount of good quality smokeless coal. The ASHP is run by two thermostats that keep the house at a constant 20C, and we always have plenty of hot water. We have spent around €40,000 on the renovation so far and around €15,000 of that was on the heating and the insulation.

HOUSE 2

The hands-on labour of love by Jon and Mary Crease continues.

Mary Crease returned from Wales with her Welsh husband, Jon, eight years ago. Working without an SEAI or other Government-aided grants, they had a very clear idea of what they wanted to do with the then tiny jaded turn-of-the-century cottage in Pedlars Cross near Clonakilty. The couple were hands-on from the start, sleeping on the garage floor and lightly spattered in lime for over two years. The result today is an extended, high-efficiency, dry period home — the best of all worlds. There’s a primary geothermal heat-pump system, a Kensa heat-store and a traditional stove to fill the thermal gap.

I first visited the couple four years ago as they were deep at work, meticulously removing the shroud of cement render that had in the past mad

e the house daunting with discomfort and damp. Together with renovating the existing cottage, they extended the home to 185 square metres. The walls of the original house were solid stone, and needed to breathe again, so appropriate insulation was a top priority if an appropriate heating solution was going to work well.

Mary explains: “Natural slate, sheep’s wool insulation and a range cooker were top of my list. Jon is a building services engineer with plumbing, electrical and refrigeration experience. I am the great apprentice. We started the project in 2016 and we laboured for the builder, carpenter and tiler. We installed our windows and doors, internal partitions, plasterboard, heating, plumbing, ventilation, carpentry and lime plastering. The walls were built up to increase the height internally.”

'Externally we are still removing cement render and repointing with lime. We have repointed and plastered all the internal walls with lime, in a consolidation mortar - two layers of cork plaster and a top coat of hemp.'

WHAT would work for the extension in terms of insulation and sealing was off the menu for the original cottage, and Jon and Mary were determined on no half-measures or typical short cuts.

“We knew about the pitfalls of dry-lining” add Jon, “That was never an option for us. Choosing insulation, standard Kingspan was used in the extension walls and floors, but we got sheep’s wool for between the floors and the attic. Yes, it is more expensive but I didn’t concentrate on the cost difference — it was always going to be sheep’s wool, and we moved into the house from the garage once it arrived. The slate wasn’t hugely more expensive but again it was the only choice for me. I would have loved timber sash windows but I lost that battle, and we settled for PVC sashes.”

“Externally we are still removing cement render and repointing with lime,” Mary continues.

A new-build to a century-old cottage, with two very different wall build-ups still resulted in a high efficiency forever home with a creative, hybrid heating system utilising a geothermal array and heat pump. The Crease family home, Clonakilty.

“Internally, we removed all the cement plaster, we kept one gable upstairs stone. This has been repointed. We have repointed and plastered all the internal walls with lime, in a consolidation mortar — two layers of cork plaster and a top coat of hemp. We attended a plastering course and had generous advice from Round Tower (Innishannon). We did a plastering course with Ty Mawr in Wales, and Jon did all the plastering, I was the mixer. It’s a forgiving product that doesn’t go off quick like cement. I loved the cork the most, as a bag weighed only 14kg compared to 25kg cement bags used in the extension. We have sheep’s wool insulation (Ty Mawr Therma fleece) in the roof and between the floors and we used insulated plasterboard in the ceilings upstairs.”

Blessed with an acre of land to utilise, the Creases went for a Geothermal heat pump system, potentially the most efficient collector to utilise with a heat pump, UFH and appropriate low flow radiators.

Geothermal heating can be run on vertical or horizontal arrays. Here the dig out of the horizontal array for Jon and Mary Creaseís home dwarfs the site ñ the advantage of having a handy acre of ground. The independent grant aid for heat pump installation has increased through the SEAI to 4500-6500 depending on the building's type.

“Our primary heating is a Kensa ground source heat pump” Mary continues, “Coupled to 3 x 200m horizontal ground loops. We employed a contractor who expertly dug 600 metres of 1.2m deep trench, and we uncoiled the HDPE pipes and laid them in a bed of sand. I have to say this was the most back-breaking job of our whole project. Indoors we laid the underfloor heating pipes on top of floor insulation and employed a company to pump 70mm liquid screed over the top, this results in a quick responsive system. We have a 1.8 kW heat pump with a total output of 6kW. We have a return water temperature of 26 degrees. We have underfloor heating upstairs in the cottage and whole house MVHR.”

Jon adds: “We have a stove in the sitting room which heats three radiators upstairs in the new part and which also boosts the hot water. The heat pump also heats the water and we have an immersion. We only light the stove if we have visitors or maybe on the weekend, and the range also keeps the kitchen warm. We are very happy with our heating. We are an all-electric house with a night rate dual meter. Generally, it’s only on at night time. I would estimate our annual electric bill (all-in) at about €1,500. I’m not sure what the BER is.”

Lime hemp plaster to the exterior walls requires patience to allow for adequate drying between coats and before finishing in Earthborne clay paint. 

Jon adds: “In terms of advice, gain as much knowledge as you can. Speak to someone like Round Tower, not Google. Also, recognise and accept your limitations. We employed plasterers for the new build and all the ceilings but we lime-plastered ourselves. Always use recommended tradespeople — our builder and carpenter were excellent. Oh, and doing it yourself, everything takes twice as long as you think it will! That’s the reality.”