A very enjoyable and interesting trip today to the Cloughjordan Ecovillage. The Ecovillage was founded on three core principles:
Building
Sustainability
Community
It has been set-up as an educational charity and lies on approx. 66 acres of land behind the main street in Cloughjordan. They have a community farm, following the community supported agricultural model, which consists of approx. 12 acres on site and a further 25 acres nearby. The residents of the village are also seeking to implement Permaculture principles as a guide to how they design their community.
From their own website - “Ecovillages are urban or rural communities of people who strive to integrate a supportive social environment with a low impact way of life”. Some of the more noticeable examples of this are the many different alternative methods and materials being employed by the residents in building their houses. Where I was expecting to see solar panels featuring prominently on roofs, and wind turbines etc., I was pleasantly surprised to see that the residents were striving to get the building fabric and envelope right before installing complex systems that often don’t deliver what is expected or touted by the marketing blurb on them.
In fact so little real data exists in Ireland in relation to building performance of the methods being employed in Cloughjordan and the effect of renewable energy technologies on energy consumption it’s great to hear that the people in Cloughjordan are gathering significant amounts of data through various monitoring and measurement systems.
The materials being employed whilst initially appearing to be low tech (and they are), are actually generally meeting the requirements more than adequately and are also avoiding the high embodied CO2 associated with traditional building methods. It must however be noted that these materials and construction methods mean that it is almost impossible to build a house which attains an A rating under the Irish BER scheme. Which is not such a bad thing in my opinion as the scheme, whilst certainly a step in the right direction, leaves an awful lot to be desired in it’s application in terms of assessing & rating a house.
I also found their district heating system very interesting – it’s great to see this idea, which has gained significant acceptance in many other countries throughout Europe, being used in Ireland. Is it a concept that will gain wider acceptance in Ireland? As a nation we appear to have an incredible aversion to having shared services as if that indicated some sort of deficiency on the homeowner’s part – Ireland’s Famine mentality still raising it’s head perhaps? Will that kind of mentality limit the wider implementation of sustainable methods for living here in Ireland?
Anyway, enjoy the pictures:
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