The another out of the rest of four funding awarded projects include led by Mr. Tom Grey (Trinity College Dublin) the ‘Ageing population and universal access’ assessment. This project aims to help with problem of many persons with disabilities and older people, who live in unsuitable housing that does not support a good quality of life, and personal, work, or health circumstances that have changed for many other people who end of living in homes that are difficult and expensive to extend or adapt to their changing needs. The provision of UD (Universal Design) dwellings in Ireland will help address many of these issues by providing flexible, adaptable, and accessible housing that caters to a wide spectrum of residents. This research will also maximise the impact of this standard by providing greater clarity around building regulation compliance for these dwellings and ensure robust and high-quality construction into the future.
Ms Marion Jammet, Irish Green Building Council (IGBC) Head of policy and advocacy will be in charge of the ‘Report into the reuse of existing buildings’. As part of this project, IGBC and UCD (the project partners) will review existing building regulations and Technical Guidance Documents (TGDs), including TGDs B, D, E, F, G, K, L and M, as well as their impact on building re-use in Ireland. The objective of this work is to assess the perceived and actual Building Regulation impediments to re-use of existing buildings and develop mitigation recommendations. These will be evidence base, and the project will be completed within 10 months.
Another funding awarded project – ‘An investigation of the effectiveness of Technical Guidance Document J (TGD J) provisions regarding flue outlet locations for solid fuel burning appliances at preventing smoke particles entering the dwelling or neighbouring dwellings is led by Prof. John Gallagher, Trinity College Dublin. Housing For All objective 25.6. Review of the Building Regulations is the driving force behind the national priority for this project. Additionally, the pollutant pathway being evaluated in this study represents an international challenge of burning a range of solid fuels for home heating, and therefore the findings can critically appraise equivalent technical guidance documents to recommend design and detail improvements to mitigate air pollution problems in the microenvironments. The Trinity engineering team have more than 15 years’ experience in CFD modelling of air pollution dispersion and control, and will define solutions to improve air quality conditions and reduce complaints by addressing the pollutant pathway which represents the primary factor of concern in this problem.
The last, but not the least project, ‘Review of existing data on defective blocks found in the Irish housing stock to determine the suitability of predictive deterioration models and in-situ monitoring systems to estimate the lifespan of the challenge’, led Dr Myra Lydon from University of Galway, aims to identify the scale of the future impact of defective concrete blocks on the Irish housing stock. A review of existing data captured from previous/on-going defective block testing will be undertaken to determine the suitability of predictive deterioration models to estimate the lifespan of the challenge. The outcomes will inform on baseline data requirements for on-going monitoring to enable informed decision making on remedial recommendations. The existing financial support scheme will be analysed to identify socio-economic barriers in accessing remedial options.
