While embracing traditional farmstead design made it trickier for this new build home in the Scottish Highlands to meet
the coveted passive house standard, mixing modern standards of super-insulation with vernacular farmhouse architecture ultimately led to the creation of a very special home for proprietors Jeanette and Jon Fenwick — one that picked up a coveted UK Passivhaus Award in 2016.
Lenny Antonelli visits a new residential development in rural Carlow that boasts only the second and third certified
passive houses in Ireland, and encouragingly, finds that meeting and exceeding the
coveted passive standard wasn't as difficult as expected.