Meeting NZEB on paper and delivering it on site are two different projects.
Energy performance designed in before the foundations go in.
Every new home built in Ireland has to meet the Nearly Zero Energy Building standard. Meeting it on paper and delivering it on site are two different projects, and the gap between them is where most of the problems in new build construction live.
ENCON designs and builds new homes to NZEB standard and beyond, with the energy performance treated as part of the build rather than bolted on at the end. That means the insulation strategy, the airtightness line, the ventilation system and the heating design are settled before the foundations go in — not resolved on site when the trades meet at a junction nobody detailed.
The result is a house that performs the way the calculations said it would: warm, quiet, cheap to run, and comfortable without the heating working hard.
Insulation, airtightness, ventilation and heating, designed together.
A house that performs is a house where four things were designed together:
Get these right and the house needs very little heating. Get them wrong and you’ve built a home that costs more to run than it should for the next sixty years.
From insulation to heat pumps, ventilation and more. Improve comfort, lower bills and increase your BER rating.
New builds, extensions and deep retrofits, fully managed from design and planning through to construction and completion.
High-quality solar panel systems for homes, farms and businesses. Lower energy costs and gain energy independence.
Energy upgrades and construction solutions for commercial, agricultural and public sector projects.
Most new build problems are coordination problems. The insulation is specified by one party, installed by another, and interrupted by a third running services through it. The airtightness membrane is sealed beautifully in three rooms and punctured in the fourth by someone who didn’t know it was there.
Single-contractor delivery removes that. We carry design, coordination, construction and commissioning, so there’s no gap between who specified a detail and who built it — and one party is answerable for the finished performance.
We test airtightness early, while the fabric is still accessible and a problem costs very little to fix, rather than discovering it at final certification when it costs a great deal.
You get a house and an explanation of how to run it: heating controls, ventilation settings, hot water schedules, and what the monitoring is telling you. A high-performance house operated like a draughty one won’t deliver what it should.
The Nearly Zero Energy Building standard, which all new dwellings in Ireland must meet. It sets demanding requirements for fabric performance and renewable energy contribution.
Yes. Passive House and EnerPHit standards go considerably further, and we build to them where a client wants that level of performance.
Yes — design, planning support, construction and commissioning under one contract, which is where most of the value in this approach sits.
It depends on size, site and specification. We give a programme at contract stage and manage against it.
In practice, almost always. A heat pump in a well-built NZEB home is cheap to run precisely because the fabric is doing its job.
Call 051 850722. Bring us in at design stage — that’s where the performance is won or lost.
