While I think that the Home Energy Saving scheme, is a good idea I do think a better investment would be to update the building code and make it harder for builders to get away with not properly insulating the houses that they built in the first place. It seems that Eamon ryan in his wisdom, will be offloading the cost of re insulating and upgrading of houses to the taxpayer, is two fold, The Grant money is taxpayers, which will probably only cover 1/3 or at best 1/2 the cost of the job, and then the rest of the money will have to be paid by the taxpayer(Home owner).
My experience with builders and contractors is that they will try and get as much money for themselves. Ripping off the taxpayer once again (The grant is almost free money to them).
Will this become another (smaller) building bubble, I’ve never seen so many builders advertising insulation contracting before. Having the tax and insurance clearings will not mean that the contractor is any good at his or her job, I suppose there will be cowboys in this business too.
While I support reducing heating bills and in turn reducing C02, I’m not 100% convinced that it will work, I hope I’m wrong!
#1 by Damian on March 25, 2009 - 12:29 pm
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Hi there.
“…a better investment would be to update the building code and make it harder for builders to get away with not properly insulating the houses that they built in the first place.”
It was one of the first things that John Gormley did after becoming Minister for the Environment.
http://www.greenparty.ie/en/news/latest_news/gormley_publishes_building_regulations_to_improve_energy_efficiency_of_new_homes
#2 by admin on March 25, 2009 - 3:10 pm
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Hi Damian,
I read that John Gormley updated the the building code, I suppose to me its seems a little too late. The building boom is over, all the house built over the last 10 years would have been build to the old standard. Which leaves an awful lot of houses to upgraded.
I wonder are Office building under the same requirement as house for Insulation ?
#3 by sustainable building on April 3, 2009 - 8:03 am
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Hello. It is good to find post like this.
I want to say that I am completely agree with you, the main problem is that builders are not doing a very good job with the insulation of the house they build in the fist place. But anyway, I would like also to say that the Home Energy Saving Scheme is a very good plan, and we all should be proud of that, because from now, we are avoiding that first bad construction you said, and making sure that in the future, the green construction will be as important as it deserve.
So yes, I hope you are wrong as well!
#4 by insulation grants? on November 24, 2009 - 6:31 pm
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There is an arguement to say that the money available in grants to people could be better spent on investing in renewable energy. However, I do think that if even 20% of homes could save 40% of the heat they produce, it can be a bad thing to offer free insulation grants to people?