Ireland: Ó Cualann Affordable Homes

  • Pilot Site: Ó Cualann Affordable Homes
  • Location: Dun Emer, Dublin, Ireland
  • Year of construction: 2021 
  • Type of buildings: A-rated Affordable housing
  • Area: 106 m² per house
  • Number of Dun Emer dwellings in CHRONICLE: 25
  • Number of residents: 1-4 per dwelling
  • Demographics: Working families of mixed income, age, ability, mobility and ethnicity
  • Facility Manager: Ó Cualann Cohousing Alliance
  • Iot Developer: IES

Description:
The houses in this pilot site are located in an area called Dun Emer, which is in north county Dublin, Ireland and are constructed to an A-Rating (A2) standard (for reference, A1 is passive housing). The entire development consists of 50 homes, of which 25 are involved in this pilot for Chronicle.
The pool of buildings for the demo activities also includes 5 recently renovated homes spread across various areas of Dublin. The homes are constructed and operated under high sustainability standards. The 5 homes being renovated will include activities such as retrofitting of windows, installation of energy-efficient heating boilers and/or Air Source Heat Pumps (ASHP).

Demographics:
The building residents are members of integrated communities of mixed income, age, ability, mobility and ethnicity. The homes are predominantly owned by working families that, in their majority, count four or more family members, typically two parents and at least two children. The homes are 100% owned by the occupants, and mortgages have been arranged with an Irish national bank through Ó Cualann. Hence, Ó Cualann has forged strong relationships with homeowners, based on trust and cooperation and maintains contact with them for the five years following the purchase, aligned with the contractually defined liability period. Additionally, Ó Cualann helps identify the properties in need of renovation and manages the renovation process.

Affordability through Ó Cualann :
Ó Cualann Cohousing Alliance is a registered charity, which, in conjunction with local authorities around Ireland, has the mission to provide affordable housing to resident groups who cannot afford the market prices, by offering homes effectively at cost. Through the funding model of Ó Cualann, the homes delivered are at approximately 25 to 30% discount compared to similar houses in the local market. Ó Cualann specialises in building communities for these residents, and many of their developments are used as benchmarks for community-building projects throughout Ireland.

The project:
Within CHRONICLE, Ó Cualann explores the benefits of the developed tools to support and improve the renovations at 5 of the Irish pilot homes and minimise the investment risk. In addition, CHRONICLE services will promote the performance optimisation of already renovated dwellings towards not only important energy savings but also the reduction of costs for the social housing residents.

.IoT implementation:
The IES solution is implemented at the Irish pilot site, Dun Emer, through the data analysis platform iSCAN. This tool streamlines the consolidation of time-series data from diverse sources, including building and energy management systems, utility portals, IoT sensors, and historical files into a centralised platform. Within CHRONICLE, this unified data foundation supports both monitoring and data analysis.

The integration between iSCAN (IES) is established with the MSemiCon single-phase 100A meter and the Aeotec Smart Hub, which enables the sensors (temperature and humidity) and smart devices to connect to the network. This tool simply acts as an intermediate data platform between the site and CHRONICLE’s Common Data Environment (CDE) by QUE.