SUSTAINABLE BUILDING:BRE Ireland will establish an innovation park in the grounds of Limerick Institute of Technology where prototype buildings will be constructed and monitored

WE ARE ALL well aware by now that the planet is in trouble and polar bears, for some, are staring into a bleak future as they watch their natural habitat melt away.

Planes, cars and buildings are big guzzlers but we budget fly when it suits us and incredibly, in our still cold climate, we design air-conditioned offices - not houses, note, because we realise that it would be pointless.

Now, with new legislation, we will be forced into taking action and a number of companies are there to advise those wanting to construct or refurbish buildings to make them more sustainable.

One such company is BRE Ireland, which stems from the BRE (Building Research Establishment) which has been in existence for nearly a century in the UK.

It hit the property media headlines last year when Kingspan developed an eco-friendly house with UK architects Sheppard Robson, that was built on BRE's innovation park in Watford.

BRE Ireland was set up last year, headed up by Colm Cryan who has a Phd in physics. He returned to Ireland from the US last year with his family, and they are now based in Limerick where BRE Ireland has links with the University of Limerick and Limerick Institute of Technology.

BRE Ireland, too, will establish an innovation park in the institute grounds where prototype buildings will be constructed and monitored. As well as this, they will gradually demolish buildings already on site to study ways of demolishing and whether it's better to "refurb or build anew" in certain cases, says Cryan.

"It will be a good opportunity to look at demolition and assess the most sustainable way of taking down a building."

This innovation park is cuurently being launched at a conference in Limerick Institute of Technology called "planning and building for sustainability" in which BRE has brought together speakers such as Minister for the Environment John Gormley, Minister for Education Batt O'Keeffe, Professor Owen Lewis of UCD, Martin Colreavy of the Department of Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Hugh Murray of architects Murray O'Laoire, and Pat Dunne of the Irish Prison Service.

There will also be speakers from the UK part of BRE whose innovation park in Watford has a remarkable array of buildings, from schools to houses (such as the Kingspan house) that act as prototypes and study models and also, as with the case of the Sheppard Robson design, can show people that there are ways other than the dormer-laden bungalow and, if the Kingspan house is anything to go by, people get very excited about new designs.

While BRE has embraced new ways of eco-building, it has traditionally looked at construction methods and other issues such as fire safety.

The company has built up a great bank of research and it is this archive that BRE Ireland gains strength from.

Already the company is working with the Limerick regeneration team, with one goal (long studied by some sociologists, councillors and architects) to look at how to get neighbourhoods to "take ownership" of their homes and environments rather than seeing them as someone else's responsibility and therefore without consequences if they damage property.

BRE Ireland has also been asked to look at the design of prisons and how refurbishments might be carried out to school buildings. With schools and prisons the remit is to create a better environment for those who use them, says Cryan. "We are looking at natural lighting, ventilation, acoustics and the impact that has on learning, health and wellbeing."

BRE Ireland is also involved in training those who will carry out inspections of properties that come under the new law which requires buildings to have an energy rating certificate when they are sold, and BRE Ireland is working with developers to create sustainable buildings that comply with building and safety regulations. One of BRE's selling points is that it is independent. "We develop learning and apply it but we don't have a vested interest. We can advise on heating systems, timber and solar panels and we don't sell them."

Areas of research include wind turbines, which it has erected in all sorts of places and tested. They work, says Cryan, in some cases and not in others, and that is to do with size of turbine, geography and wind conditions. Site considerations cover other areas such as ground-source heat pumps which, if put in inappropriately, can lose any benefit with high electricity bills from pumps.

Quality of workmanship has been identified - by many who have looked at how buildings will be rated - as an issue and BRE Ireland says that it has monitors that can assess this, such as tools that pick up a building's heat profile and can identify cold gaps.

This could be a case of builders beware - when things go wrong on buildings it is costly and the blame game starts. On one project BRE was called in to investigate why the render had fallen off 15 newly built houses. It turned out that the wrong trowel had been used to apply it - and the houses were stripped and started again.

As we head into a more sustainable future who knows, the knock-on might be better built houses.