523 homes owned by DLRCoCo not suitable for energy retrofitting

Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council has said that 523 of the homes owned by the local authority are not suitable for energy retrofitting due to their historical status or location near public pavement.

DLRCoCo was responding to a motion tabled by People Before Profit councillor Melisa Halpin asking the council to retrofit all council-owned homes “over the next 3 years to bring them up to the highest BER rating.”

In its reply the council said that “over the past 10 years over 3500 homes have benefited from retrofit works, either as part of the dlr maintenance programme or specifically targeted works such as the cavity wall project.

“As part of budget 2019 an allocation of €100,000 was provided to support an energy retrofit upgrade at Daleview, Ballybrack, which brings these units up to a high B BER and has completed the energy works on maisonettes at this location.”

The council says that it learned from its works on Daleview that it is more cost efficient to undertake retrofitting works on a large scale, rather than groups of houses at a time.

“However, of the 4,700 units owned by DLR, 1511 have solid walls.

“Of this number 936 are considered suitable for energy upgrades using external wall insulation.

“523 of the units are not suitable for external wall insulation because they are historic buildings or front directly on to a public pavement.

“Of the solid wall units in the DLR area, 140 form part of a maisonette block.

“Many have large gardens which could provide opportunities for redevelopment and could achieve additional housing as well as nZEB quality homes.

“Other homes may require different solutions and thus each home needs to be monitored and surveyed for current air tightness and specific project suitability.”

Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council says that funding has been provided by the central Government to improve the authority’s housing stock with a survey of the homes set to begin shortly.

“It is good practice that a stock survey should form part of an asset management plan which will allow dlr programme works over a number of years with a detailed costing model.

“Maintenance have begun to install Climote devices across our housing stock to help identify the homes in most need for proposed retrofitting.

“The devices have the ability to compare and generate data before and after retrofit works, and valuable data can be gathered from these devices across our housing stock which would enable the Housing Department to develop a strategy /retrofit plan for the housing stock.”

It is estimated that it will cost €27,000 to retrofit each home with €1,114,467 being allocated to begin works on 41 properties.