THOSE BUILDING new houses must be a rare breed nowadays but anyone contemplating it will need to be prepared for new guidelines coming in on December 1st which will require you to build in an even more energy efficient way. It also applies to those building extensions and doing certain house renovations. Anyone not prepared to build to meet the new standards needs to get their planning permission in before December 1st.
The last Part L regs, in 2008, required an improvement in energy efficiency of 40 per cent over the 2005 standards, and the latest will up this to 60 per cent (for more on this see environ.ie). And it wont stop there: the regulations will change again in a few years time as we march towards zero-carbon homes. Goodbye coal hole: here comes the sun . . .
