NuTech is in the process of building 35 houses with Fingal County Council. One of these houses achieves an A2 rating (equivalent to a Code Level 5 rating for energy use and CO2 emissions) and features the NuTech Integrated Solar Heating, Hot Water and HRV system.
The other 34 houses have similar systems and achieve an A3 rating - they are not as well insulated and do not have as large a solar array as the A2 type house. Below is a recent article from Construct Ireland regarding this development
With some of the most impressive moves toward sustainability over the last few years coming in the form of planning requirements, it should come as no surprise that many local authorities are pioneering energy efficient housing in their own housing stock. Jason Walsh visited a site in Oldtown, County Dublin, to see how Fingal County Council is putting sustainability into practice with help from Keenan Timber Frame, Ecological Building Systems, Nutech Renewables and others
Fingal County Council is arguably one of Ireland's most forward-looking local authorities when it comes to sustainability. Pioneers of local energy standards that later led to drastic improvements in Part L of the Building Regulations, the north Dublin local authority has also been at the forefront of developing its own energy efficient public housing.
Local issues
In today's gloomy house-building climate it's easy to forget that the demand – and, in fact, need – for more and better housing continues. As Niall Keenan of Keenan Timber Frame points out, although the pace of private developments has certainly slowed, there remains a public housing requirement. "The local authority is where the ball is going to bounce at the minute," he says.
Local authority housing can be viewed in a number of ways. As Lynsey Hanley documents in 'Estates: An Intimate History' her outstanding history of council housing in the UK, public housing has gone through a number of image changes over the course of the past century, from the 'homes fit for heroes' of the post-First World War era to the 'property-owning democracy' of Harold Macmillan, a view later espoused by Margaret Thatcher who decimated Britain's public housing stock by allowing tenants to buy on the one hand – itself no bad thing – but, crucially, forbidding councils from using the revenue gained to build more houses.
By the 1990s, 'council house' had become a pejorative term. CJ Stone's 'Housing Benefit Hill' details life in what it is now popular to refer to as 'sink estates', bleak fortresses of unemployment whose inhabitants lead dim lives, alienated by architects and isolated by planners.
Ireland has perhaps had a somewhat less antagonistic relationship with public housing and yet 'the Flats' – note the definite article – loom large in the Irish urban imagination. The Fatima Mansions, the 'Mun – these places have been shorthand for poverty and despair in the lexicography of Irish psycho-geography.
It wasn't always this way. Ireland's public housing programme was initiated as a response to the continued existence of tenement dwellings – otherwise known as overcrowded slums. The object of public housing was that most republican of values: equality. The job of the concrete and mortar was not simply to provide shelter but to raise up, to allow everyone equal access to the resources of society as citizens. Unfortunately, things didn't always work out that way and, for many, state-built housing is seen as at best a place where lives are dominated by poverty, loneliness and despair or, worse, a dumping ground for 'problem tenants'.
Here and now in 2008 we can see clear, if tentative, moves to redress the decline in public housing and make-up for the mistakes of the past. One important way of doing this is by providing tenants with attractive nd comfortable houses and energy, both use and conservation, is a major part of this.
With the Fingal County Council development in Oldtown a good building energy rating (BER) is the central concern: "A3-rated houses are where it's at, at the moment," says Keenan. "The [forthcoming] 2010 regulations will get you an A3-rating, more or less."
Keenan also argues that A3 is not only an attainable standard, it's a realistic one too: "In the studies we've done we found that A3 is affordable. As you get to an A2 or A1 it gets more expensive."
On the way: a three bedroom house takes shape in Oldtown
Dublin dwellings
Sustainable housing has become something of a fixture in the north Dublin area thanks to Fingal County Council, a fact that makes the local authority a trail-blazer.
For example, Fingal County Council was the first local authority to raise requirements for planning permission above the national level by demanding 60% energy demand and carbon emissions reductions along with a renewable energy component in housing under local area plans. Fingal’s initiative was matched by other local authorities including Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, Wicklow, Wexford and South Dublin County Councils, creating an irresistible groundswell which inevitably forced the hand of national government to improve standards nationally. The principle behind Fingal County Council's move is a simple one: raising standards across the board.
Sustainable building has a longer history in Ireland than is commonly acknowledged – at least for those who could afford it. Tim Cooper's Green Building, an apartment complex built in Dublin's Temple Bar district during the 1990s, shows that given a desire to do so, sustainability was always achievable. The problem was that not only did it cost money, awareness was at a low level. The people interested in sustainable housing tended to be relatively well-off greens.
However, if sustainable building was to become the norm, Fingal County Council understood that the real changes had to be made with family homes, including local authority houses. With both its pioneering changes to planning requirements and its own high-specification developments, Fingal County Council intends to achieve just that.
The dwellings in Oldtown are a combination of 76 square metre two-bed bungalows and 98 square metre three-bedroom houses. A total of 35 dwellings are being built on the site of which, at the time of writing, 24 were complete.
All of the houses in the Oldtown development use Keenan Timber Frame's Future Frame system for construction.
Future Frame and Future Frame Plus, both developed by Keenan Timber Frame are semi-closed panel timber frame building systems designed with energy efficiency in mind, particularly with relation to promoting air-tightness.
"We take care of air-tightness in the factory and assist on-site," said Niall Keenan. "It takes the hassle out."
According to Keenan Timber Frame, old-fashioned open panel systems are no longer in much demand: "Ninety per cent of what goes through the factory is Future Frame," says Niall Keenan. "Open panel is finished – it’s had its day, its archaic."
John and Niall Keenan of Keenan Timber Frame
Founded nine years ago and employing a total of 35 staff, Louth-based Keenan Timber Frame developed Future Frame and Future Frame Plus as a result of its experience in the timber frame housing market. The firm produces around 250 houses per year, half of which are for developers, the other half tending to be sold in the self-build market.
Built on the factory floor, not the site: Keenan Timber Frame's manufacturing facility
Contractor Joe Commins says the Future Frame system did not result in any particular difficulties: "There were no major problems. As it's been our first air-tight job it did throw-up a few minor challenges – everybody has to be trained and pushed on."
Nevertheless, with on-site support from both Keenan Timber Frame and Ecological Building Systems, Commins says his firm was comfortable with the build and is pleased with the results thus far: "I do believe they'll be a very warm house – if these houses aren't warn, none will be.
"It's not rocket science to get to this level," he said.
Vacuum packed
When it comes to maintaining the integrity of the building envelope in order to provide air-tightness, Keenan Timber Frame chose to work with Ecological Building Systems . Ecological Building Systems, a division of McCann and Byrne have been a stalwart of sustainable building in Ireland for many years and for Future Frame and Future Frame Plus it supplies the Pro-Clima Intelligent Air-Tight System.
As Niall Keenan explains: "We went with Ecological Building Systems because it's one thing getting the product but they have the expertise."
Ecological Building Systems' Niall Crosson explained to Construct Ireland during a telephone interview: "We've been working with Keenan Timber Frame for over a year now, helping them to develop their Future Frame product.
"We [also] gave a seminar to Fingal County Council about air-tightness," he said.
As Crosson explained, the Pro-Clima system runs the gamut of air-tightness: "There's Intello Plus, an intelligent vapour check and Unitape for sealing – windows can often be an area where buildings fail to achieve air-tightness. That can be a difficult area to seal. Keenan Timber Frame used Tescon Profile to tape all windows and doors."
Crosson explained that one of the major areas for leakage in timber frame buildings is floor separations which often result in significant air-leakage through the joists: "Solitex Plus, which is air-tight and strong, but also vapour permeable was used over the joists. Vapour transfer is allowed but air transfer isn't.
"The connections from the external walls to the ground floor were [also] important. Orcon F adhesive was used to bond the membrane to the concrete floor."
Crosson is also keen to stress the benefits of the timber frame manufacturing process itself: "Moving the majority of the labour from the site to the factory was essential," he said. In addition, workmanship on-site remained vital: "The contractor on-site was exceptionally keen to get this right – he got the detailing and sealing to the highest level."
At the end of the process, the houses are achieving exceptional performance: "Keenan Timber Frame grasped the demands from Fingal County Council as an opportunity. They achieved an air permeability almost ten times better than required," said Crosson.
Indeed, the Oldtown houses have an air permeability of of 1.2m3/h/m2 at 50 pascals.
Attention to detail, sadly lacking from typical Irish buildings, is in this case impeccably observed, and guarantees air tightness – even the mechanical and electrical services are designed so as to avoid puncturing the vapour check
"The upper limit of the regulations is 10m3/h/m2 at 50 pascals [and] the demand on this project was for less than 3."
Even when it came to on-site testing for air-tightness the Oldtown development saw innovation. The standard approach to assessing a building's air-tightness is a blower-door test, performed at the end of the building process. Unfortunately, this is often too late and going back to fix problems can be costly.
"KTF have a machine called a Pro Clima Wincon which is used during the actual building process," said Crosson.
The Pro Clima Wincon is a high performance air-tightness testing device (9800m3/h at 50 Pa pressure differential) that provides a simple, cost-effective means of monitoring the consistency of on-site practices and the quality of the air-tightness layer of any type of construction – at any stage of the construction process. Its operation is based on a simple principle: the Wincon generates a negative pressure and thereby enables un-designed air leaks to be identified and sealed.
"It allows the building to be depressurised and [the user to] identify leakages by feeling the wind coming in or using a smoke pencil for visual representation," said Crosson. "You could call it a spirit level for air-tightness."
After the buildings were up a blower-door test was performed as usual and the results were good: "The tester hadn't seen anything like it," said Crosson. "Usually you only get results like this one with buildings where the owner has gone to extraordinary lengths to do so.
"The passive house requirement has an N50 of 0.6 [air changes per hour], that's not far off a Q50 [air permeability] of not more than one. These buildings are exceptionally close to that standard."
Energy in, energy out
Vital as air-tightness is, it is not the only requirement of a sustainable building: "Air-tightness is only one element of it," said Niall Keenan of Keenan Timber Frame, "a good U-value is only one element – you have site orientation and renewables also. They're all important”.
The Oldtown houses are insulated with high-density fibreglass with a thermal conductivity of 0.035.
Keenan Timber Frame stresses that in the future natural insulation material could replace high-density fibreglass once it becomes more unaffordable.
The solar panels which adorn the roofs of each house can supply the majority of a household's domestic hot water needs
Heat recovery ventilation systems, supplied by Nutech Renewables, installed in the attic of every house
John Keenan remains hopeful, though: "This will end at the passive house – that's the objective, but we're maybe behind our European neighbours, but we’re quickly catching up”.
Windows and doors, supplied by Munster Joinery are all fitted with low-e, argon-filled glazing, in order to achieve better thermal performance.
In order to achieve their A3 rating, of course, the Oldtown development also required a significant renewable energy component. To this the houses feature an innovative renewable energy system designed by Nutech Renewables in Warrenpoint, County Down:
"We've supplied air-solar collectors that are linked into heat-recovery ventilation and a solar hot water system," said Nutech's Bill Quigley. "We've integrated a heat pump into it also – it's a complete package."
The majority of a household's domestic hot water needs can be met by using solar panels. During the winter, the solar panel can heat a hot water cylinder to 30 degrees celcius, removing this heating component from the household’s main heating source of oil or gas. Nutech further estimates that Ireland has sufficient solar resource to provide around 60 per cent of a typical household’s hot water, mostly during the summer months.
The system used in Oldtown is Nutech’s 140 Sunwarm, designed for solar air heating and ventilation. Sunwarm provides solar thermal energy to heat the house and hot water through a flat plate panel collector and integrates a ventilation system that maximises energy efficiency. This results in fresh air throughout the house without having to open windows to ventilate, something that is important in a house designed with air-tightness in mind, and all with very low running costs in electricity.
In winter as much solar energy as is available is collected and is distributed to the hot water storage and ventilated through each home to provide preliminary heating. This reduces the amount of input that is required from the main heating source, so reducing the home’s heating bill.
Conversely, in summer heating may not be required and a preferred cooling effect may be desired. In this instance all available solar energy is used to heat the water in the storage cylinder and the ventilation system circulates cool fresh air around the home.
This system has been designed by Nutech along with Nuaire to provide an innovative and environmentally friendly solar energy home heating solution that is a recognised renewable energy product by the Reconnect scheme in the North of Ireland, and Sustainable Energy Ireland’s Greener Homes scheme in the republic for the purpose of grant aid.
What can be seen with the Oldtown development is a marker being put down for higher standards of construction and a clear move toward sustainable housing on a scale that meets the needs of a growing population, not just salves the consciences of the well-heeled.
Of course, it is as easy to romanticise public housing as it is to demonise it. In reality public housing has always been something of a mixed bag. There is no reason why houses built and managed by the state should be any worse than those built by the private sector – but that has often been the case. Fingal County Council's Oldtown development should, if all goes to plan, show that making a distinction in quality between private and public housing could become a thing of the past.
Project details
Client: Fingal County Council
Architect: Fingal County Council
Main contractor: Commins Construction Ltd.
Timber-frame manufacturer: Keenan Timber Frame
Heating & ventilation system: Nutech Renewables
Air-tightness products: Ecological Building Systems
Windows: Munster Joinery
References
1Hanley, Lynsey 'Estates: An Intimate History', Granta, London, 2007
2Stone, CJ 'Housing Benefit Hill and Other Places: Collected Columns 1993–1998', Verso, Edinburgh, 2001
Knockananna, Co.Wicklow
First pilot scheme offering state of the art ‘eco-houses’ to County Council in Ireland, featuring 22 houses situated on a site sloping to the South which was ideal for the utilisation of
solar energy, A3 Rating. Below is the details of the development from a construct Ireland Article about the project
An advocate of sustainable building long before it was fashionable, Bill Quigley of NuTech Renewables has subsequently seen the mainstreaming of sustainability at first hand, having input into substantial projects for Leahy Bros, MKN and GEDA Construction amongst others. In their latest project, NuTech are working with Wicklow County Council on a social housing scheme with impressively high energy performance targets to meet, as Quigley explains.
The site in Knockananna on which these twenty-two houses are situated is interesting from the energy design viewpoint for two reasons. Firstly, a really good point is that the site slopes gently to the south which makes it attractive for the utilisation of solar energy, but secondly, the site is high in the Wicklow hills which will have a negative effect on the ambient temperatures that will be experienced in winter. Because of these two points the designer and project manager of this housing scheme for Wicklow County Council, Stephen O’Sullivan, approached NuTech Renewables to carry out a full energy analysis of various house types and construction to ensure that the houses would perform in practice as low energy, low CO2 houses.
In early meetings with Marc Devereux, senior engineer, housing section in Wicklow County Council and Stephen O’Sullivan, it was clear that as part of this project the council wanted to understand the principles of effective low energy housing and how it could be replicated throughout the county in future projects.
It was decided that the project should be divided into three parts, beginning with the design and analysis stage, carried out by NuTech Renewables with the help of Marc Devereux and Stephen O’Sullivan. This stage would be concluded when the houses were going out to tender. The build stage would be the next part, where NuTech Renewables would be closely involved in the build process to ensure that the houses and systems were meeting the criteria as set out in the analysis stage. The final part would the monitoring stage where NuTech Renewables would monitor the energy performance of the houses to report on the energy balances and ensure that the design was functioning correctly.
Approval for the project to proceed was received from the Department of the Environment on the basis that phase one of the project, which involved the first ten houses, would be built and monitored prior to phase two, the last twelve houses, being completed.~
The design phase
From the outset NuTech pointed out that thermal energy use in housing is essentially divided into three thirds. The first third is by way of heat loss through the fabric. The second third is by way of air infiltration and the necessary air for ventilation, and the final third is the energy demand for domestic hot water.
The heating control system, as designed by NuTech Renewables, is vitally important in achieving a genuinely low energy house and greatly improves the efficiency of the solar collectors
To save energy by adding more and more insulation in the fabric runs up against the law of diminishing returns. Hence, it was determined that the design U-values for the fabric would be considerably better than the Building regulations but not down to Passive House standards despite the elevation of the site. It is worth remembering that adding a massive amount of insulation to the fabric will not achieve a zero energy house as this measure is only attacking one third of the house energy demand. The following U-values were adopted:
• The external wall U-value was calculated at 0.179 W/m2K
• The ground floor U-Value was calculated at 0.176 W/m2K
• The sloping roof U-value was calculated at 0.16 W/m2K
• The windows U-Value was calculated at 1.50 W/m2K
The houses were designed to be constructed using timber frame construction. It was decided to use closed panel construction with factory fitted insulation. The walls were further battened out to create a service area on the inside face and this service area was also further insulated on site - hence the reasonably low U-value achieved in the external walls.
The energy savings that can be achieved by attacking energy use in the area of air infiltration and the necessary air for ventilation is known as the ‘low hanging fruit’ area. This is because measures to achieve energy saving in this area can yield far greater returns for clever design because it represents a full third of the typical design load. A specially designed heat recovery ventilation (HRV) system was arrived at to drastically reduce energy demand in this area.
Finally, a design to utilise solar collectors to reduce not only the energy demand for space heating but also to reduce the domestic hot water load was determined. Linking energy from the solar collectors into the HRV system and the heating system makes great use of the solar collectors and improves their annual solar yield enormously.
On the energy supply side it was decided to use a wood pellet stove/boiler in the house to provide the back-up energy for space and water heating. The stove chosen by NuTech had a maximum output of 10 kW with 20% of its energy going directly to the room by way of radiant and convection heat while the remaining 80% is delivered to the hot water circuit.
Solar collectors are linked into the heating system
The control system design for the integrated space heating, ventilation, hot water and solar heating system was carried out by NuTech. Mark Forkin of NuTech Renewables designed the controller such that the homeowner only has to dial up the required temperature and set the boiler timer to run the wood pellet stove as and when desired to provide back-up energy for space or water heating. The control system is vitally important in achieving a genuinely low energy house. This is particularly important in the case where there are integrated systems such as solar collectors, HRV systems and wood pellet boilers.
In summary then, in the design phase we had arrived at a design solution involving the following:
• appropriate levels of insulation to reduce heat loss through the fabric
• details to reduce the amount of linear thermal bridging in the construction
• a designed level of air tightness which could be achieved on site
• a specially designed HRV system which was utilised as the heating system of the house
• a specially designed air handling unit with an inbuilt control system that integrated the HRV system with the air solar collectors, the heat distribution system and the wood pellet boiler
The analysis of this overall system showed that this was a indeed a low energy house design saving of the order of 64% of the energy required for space and water heating including ventilation and lighting. The carbon savings, over the base case reference house were much higher due to both the reduction in energy demand but also to the use of the wood pellet stove on the energy supply side. When analysed using the DEAP software from SEI the houses achieve an A3 rating. This is actually very good when it is considered that wood pellet boilers will be some 10% less efficient than a condensing gas or oil boiler (based on calculations using the Gross calorific value for relative fuels). From Wicklow County Council’s viewpoint we now had a system design that was repeatable on any site in Wicklow. This concluded the work done on the design phase.
The build phase
The building of the houses started in May 2007 and the first phase of ten houses are now fully erected on site. The builder is Kevin Mahon of Donnelly Installations Ltd – a company that specialises in building timber frame houses. Armstrong Timber Frame supplied the house timber frame kits. Both of these companies are based locally and are now fully committed to building houses that incorporate low energy features.
It is worth noting that these houses are dormer bungalows. The significance of this is that NuTech has always found that one of the most difficult roofs to effectively insulate are the standard ‘room in the roof’ type trusses so commonly used in dormer bungalows. At least of equal importance is the fact that these type of roofs are notoriously difficult to air-tighten. Normally in other countries such as the Netherlands a SIPS type roof panel is used but there were problems in using any of these systems in this case, including the span length from wall plate to ridge and the cost of a SIPS type roof. The solution used in these houses in Knockananna was the use of sprayed Icynene insulation – a system widely used in Canada. This had the effect of not only insulating the roof but it also air-tightened it particularly as the roof was insulated from the wall plate to the ridge. This meant that we had the benefit of a low cost trussed rafter roof with a fully integrated insulating and air-tightening membrane.
Sprayed Icynene insulation was used to insulate the roof, which also improved the air-tightness of the building
NuTech carried out blower door testing on site during the build process in order to ensure that the houses would achieve their design adroitness level of 0.1 air changes per hour at normal pressure. The sealing of the timber frames to the concrete floor along with specialist sealing tapes around the windows was also addressed. Sealing around the Velux windows was particularly important, and was achieved by sealing the window in its ope first and then sealing the roof vapour barrier to the window with proprietary tapes. The importance of detailed design and the follow up inspection and testing on site to achieve air tightness cannot be over emphasised. The enthusiasm and effort put into the project by Stephen O’Sullivan of Wicklow County Council who is acting as project manager for the council is of vital importance. This enthusiasm has also spread to the builder Kevin Mahon. In short, the whole team is determined that the houses will be built to the specification and to achieve the energy targets.
A number of the houses are now completed and the wood pellet boilers have been installed and tested. Included in this testing phase has been the design of the chimney. This work was carried out in conjunction with Schiedel Chimney Systems and the insulated flue is brought all of the way up through the house and terminates at a high level over the roof. This ensures that the flue will work well and that the residents should not experience any odours outside the houses. NuTech have now begun a phase of testing to ensure that the houses will perform to their designed energy targets. Final blower door testing will be completed to determine the air infiltration rate. NuTech will then carry out temperature monitoring and other measurements to determine the overall heat loss characteristic of the houses. Once we know this we can calculate and predict with much more confidence their actual energy performance. NuTech do this by using our hour-by-hour energy model. This model has hour-by-hour weather data built-in and so, gives a fairly realistic picture as to how the houses will perform in winter and summer. One snag of course is that we do not have weather data for Knockananna but we can, with the aid of Met Eireann, get some idea of what winter temperatures we will encounter and then base the calculations on that data. Because of the location of these houses at such an elevation over sea level and because of the exposure to high winds it makes good sense to ensure that they are as airtight as the design demands and to ensure that the insulation systems are as effective as possible. This is why so much attention = is being paid to the actual performance of all of the systems being used in the Knockananna houses, which show a designed A3 rating.
One point that is worth making in relation to houses designed an A3 rating is as follows: an A3 house will have a primary energy demand of, for instance, 70 kWh/m2/a. Let us assume the house has a floor area of 100m2. It will therefore use 7,000 kWh in a year for space heating, ventilation, hot water and lighting. Subtract from this total some 2,000 kWh that is associated with electricity for lighting, fans, and so on, and this leaves say, 5,000 kWh that is supplied by way of the heating system. Allowing for the calorific value of oil and the factor for primary to delivered energy this equates to approximately 400 litres of oil for space and water heating in a year.
This is a small amount, so everybody in the building industry should be aware that a 100m2 A3 house will use only a small amount of oil or gas – if it uses a large amount more then this could lead to serious dissatisfaction among home owners.
The insulated flue, supplied by Schiedel Chimney Systems, is brought through the house and terminates at a high level over the roof, ensuring that the flue will work well and that the residents should not experience bad odours outside the house
The monitoring phase
When the houses are completed it is intended to monitor both fuel usage and average house temperatures over a period of two years. NuTech will be endeavouring to check the variation due to numbers of occupants per house and their lifestyle in these low energy houses. It is well known that variances in types of occupancy can have a huge effect on the actual energy performance of houses of a particular design. It is intended to minimise this variation by way of explanation of the systems involved and how best to use the systems such that the occupants will achieve both high levels of comfort and a high quality lifestyle. As a part of this programme NuTech will be providing a demonstration of the operation of the systems to each resident. They will also have a telephone contact number for queries by residents and will be maintaining the systems throughout the monitoring period.
In summary
The design, building and monitoring of these houses in Knockananna has provided a unique opportunity to arrive at a system for low energy housing that is practicable, buildable and reasonably economical. The monitoring that is taking place in both the building phase and when the houses are occupied will provide excellent information on the heat loss characteristic of these houses and on the actual energy performance of the houses when occupied by different families.
Project details
Client: Wicklow County Council
Main contractor: Donnelly Installations
Timber frame: Armstrong Timber Frame
Energy consultants, renewables and HRV: NuTech Renewables
Roof insulation: Icynene supplied by GMS Insulations
Chimneys: Schiedel Chimney Systems
Windows: Rationel
“The hot water lasts for ages due to the solar panels, and with 3 daughters that’s a good thing”.
“The ventilation system is fantastic. I hardly need to use my inhalers now and the heat is incredible from just an hour with the boiler on”.
“So little fuel is needed to run the house and even when the heating is of the warmth is kept inside for hours"
“There is hardly any work to be done as long as the timers are set. The hot water lasts for ages due to the solar panels, and with three daughters that is a good thing. All I have to do is hoover out a small amount of ash from the wood pellet boiler every couple of days.”
“It is much more economical. A bag of pellets lasts a couple of weeks and only costs €3.75”
“So little fuel is needed to run the house and even when the heating is off the warmth ios kept inside for hours. We have the temperature at the lowest level and it is still very warm
The Masonic Havens development in Virginia Co Cavan was a House of Tomorrow supported project consisting of 26 sheltered houses for the elderly.
