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Get Insulated Raft Foundation In Cork For Passive House Development

Passive House or Passivhaus is a fresh approach towards energy-efficient building design and construction. The concept was pioneered by the German physicist, Dr Wolfgang Feist and Swedish structural engineer Bo Adamson. The first passive house was built in Ireland back in 2004, by architect Tomas O'Leary, he named his house, Out of the Blue. Today, there are nearly 50 such Passivhaus buildings registered in Ireland, according to the Passive House Association of Ireland, which is an organisation dedicated to promote, educate and facilitate such buildings in the country. Thanks to such efforts, there is a growing demand for raft foundations in Cork, Dublin and other parts of Ireland, as more and more homeowners are warming up to the importance of having energy-efficient homes.  

Background Of The Passive House Concept

Fundamentally Passive House started off as an architectural framework to have reduced carbon footprint for buildings. But eventually, it has become more of a voluntary standard, accrediting the energy efficiency of a building. Now, one of the key aspects of a Passive House is its foundation. An insulated raft foundation is the best match.

Squared Space, an offsite constructor and structural engineer in Cork, extensively works with Kore Insulated Raft foundation systems which are among the top developers of insulated foundations for Passivhaus buildings.

How Is Insulated Raft Foundation Different From Traditional Foundation

When insulating a building, thermal bridging occurs in the gaps between the insulating and non-insulating materials, such as the junctions of the floor and the wall. Additional roof or wall insulation can increase the warmth, but it won’t fix the thermal bridging, which will eventually get colder, leading to considerate heat loss. So it is more important to get rid of the thermal bridges at the time of construction. This requirement is substantially filled up with Kore’s insulated foundation system, which is much in contrast with traditional raft foundations.

For developing insulated raft-type foundations, the concrete slab is poured into a tub of insulation and filled up. Thus the insulation is evenly spread directly touching the ground. The edges of this ‘tub’ of insulation are usually continuous with the wall insulation, and the method is generally more amenable to ensuring the foundations are thermal bridge-free.

KORE Floor EPS100 White, KORE Floor EPS200 White, and KORE Floor EPS300 White are the three KORE EPS components that make up the Insulated Foundation System. To limit the heat transmission of ground concrete floors, the technology provides an effective insulating layer. On top of the KORE Insulated Foundation System, an in situ concrete slab is laid.

According to Square Space, the design of the insulation systems varies based on the type of wall loadings. The company that has been a key player in developing diverse steel frame houses in Ireland, explains that the foundations designed for timber or steel frame construction would have both an inner and an outer ring beam. One beam would support the frame and the other for an exterior leaf of block or brick. Both variants would be thermally isolated from the floor slab.

Square Space has not only delivered this energy-efficient design in Cork but has worked with different building projects using insulated raft foundations in Dublin and other parts of Ireland. So the building standard is evidently a growing prospect which is here to stay in Ireland, for NZEb and Passive rated homes.