EDITOR'S LETTER / WELCOME

Welcome... Necessity may be the mother of invention - think of byre dwellings that had cattle downstairs to help keep the house warm - but so is ingenuity. When we asked selfbuilders to submit their projects for publication in Selfbuild magazine, see page 129, we didn’t expect to hear about cattle still playing a part in heating Irish homes. Yet that’s exactly what Matt and Denise Donoghue have achieved in Co Cork with the help of a humble heat pump. Dairy farms spend a lot of money on cooling milk and Matt, assisted by his heating systems engineer, Work, work, came up with a way to use this waste heat for their work hot water and underfloor heating. The home office The heat pump works as any other, the only difference is where the heat is extracted from instead of it being from the air or ground, it’s from the milk. Their story starts page 20. The concept is simple, as all robust designs are, which once again shows how self-builders continue to be at the forefront of innovation and embracing Sliding with sustainable alternatives, and crucially that they’re style Pocket doors willing to invest in them.

Irish design heroes The contemporaries

Lego land

Building with insulating concrete formwork

Astrid Madsen - Editor astrid.madsen@selfbuild.ie

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