HE WAS FRIENDLY welcomed waiting for this 22-year-old Cork family home, painted in a soft primrose color and with invisible roasted Swedish roots with permission from a country that has lived with intense cold and the worst winter weather for centuries.
The idea, effort and quality of materials laid down on the A2-BER and achieved 10 Glenrichmond when it was imported and built in just three months back in 2000 has given comfort and health dividends to its Irish-Swedish inhabitants year out, year out ever since, at a steady 21C internally and with the freshest of filtered air as well.
Now that they are moving on, with three adult children who have flown the nest, the timing of its arrival on the market – with an ever-increasing climate crisis and soaring energy costs due to the war in Ukraine – could not be more timely for its owner and its next inhabitants.
The home of Irish Margaret Sheeran and her husband Nils-Ove Johansson, No. 10, is located on the outskirts of Cork’s Glanmire / city limits (not to mention close to the M8 for easy travel further afield), and has appeared on these pages before. It was in March 2000, when a crew of four Swedes came to deliver this ordered home (it came in three shipping containers) from Scandinavia, built of slow-growing Nordic pine high up in Sweden, as robust wood as you can ever get, hardened up of winter temperatures as low as -30C.
Then the home (manufacturer was Sjodalshus / Gotenehus, Sweden) was shown here again in July 2001, after its one-year anniversary had passed. Later, its interiors were covered in our Home / Interior Department.
It hit the pages of that time late 2001 and 2002 it participated in journal. The followed in March of the same year, such was the mix of novelty in construction methods (it is steps over “kit-homes”, which followed frequently during the Celtic Tiger times), its introduction to proven technology from Sweden and its energy efficiency / low operating costs.
It was also picked up in Passive House magazine (issue 35), such as the bible about energy-efficient construction, which at the time looked at its high insulation levels, NIBE heat pumps (delivered via Unipipe) and other elements.
Standard-run owners Margaret and Nils-Ove even started a company from their home, Swedish Trade Center Ltd, which acts as an agent for a number of Swedish house products, triple-glazed windows and more, while Margaret herself project-led a number of homes in Ireland of Swedish origin.
Since the early days and the media coverage, the owners have not sat in their comfortable warehouses. Just before their plans to sell up, they have installed banks of solar panels (PV) that meet much of today’s energy needs. These can be backed up by battery storage and a smart meter (app controlled on a phone) shows production, consumption and any seasonal surpluses that can be sold back to the national grid.
The couple estimates that they use 8,000-9,000 kW hours per year and their PV panels give them 5,400 kW hours per year. They received 600 kW hours in March alone and are disappointed with the easy-to-use (and easy-to-pay) technology at a relentless fingertip.
The technology even covers the operating costs of “Oscar”, their robotic battery-charged Husqvarna lawnmower. It nibbles silently on their lawns, to a programmed route map, and looks eerily like a garden-grown, grass-eating turtle when it’s busy keeping the lawns as pristine as the quiet interiors of the house.
That’s all in favor of No. 10’s next owner, as it hits the market this weekend with a € 780,000 AMV quoted by Sherry FitzGerald agents Ann O’Mahony and Gillian McDonnell.
The price includes Oscar: the Sheeran-Johansson family will not need it because they are moving to an apartment in Dublin, and it is not needed on their farm in Sweden, where they have had similar heating technology since the 1990s for a century. -plus old family home.
That € 780,000 AMV is for a detached Glanmire cozy home with four beds, clearly in a restrained Scandinavian style. In showhouse order, it is as fresh as it was in 2001 when it was seen here as a budding one-off event.
The detached property of 2,834 sqm (m) is located on almost half an acre in Glenrichmond, among other large and individual detached family homes.
No 10 is delivered with an adjacent large (550 sqm / 52 sqm) garage / office and shop, with attic. At the diagonal garden end there is another garden room, about 24 sqm, completely independent with services, kitchenette, etc, and perfect for a gym / studio, home office and / or more. Guests do not mind being banished here either, it is very convenient (but official regulations do not allow such garden rooms to be used for sleeping in).
The main house – virtually all wood and now even more ultra-low energy after its PV hat on the roof was added this year – has a highly adaptable floor plan, with one of its four bedrooms at ground level. Another three are located above each side of a central first floor, spacious living room with access to the balcony overlooking the expansive sandstone patio, garden, office and garden room.
One of the bedrooms upstairs has its own bathroom, sanitary ware is Villeroy & Boch, and the heat pump heat is underfloor heating on both floors.
Exterior doors open out, not in – again a very sensible design touch, for quick / emergency escape – and even more robust resistance
for safety’s sake. On the security front, there are also electric gates and an alarm system with CCTV.
Of course, much of what makes this well-secured home so comfortable is discreetly out of sight. The Swedish company Sundolit AB made the specialist foundations, with 300 mm dense aeroboard insulation, while the walls have 240 mm rock wool and the attics have 400 mm rock wool.
Cork architects Jack Coughlan Associates kept an eye on the project as early as 2000 and recommended local specialist contractors such as Cathal Conlon for plumbing and Manning Electrical (there is three-phase power), along with a mechanical ventilation system for air purity and heat recovery, with air changes twice an hour for a healthy indoor climate (35-45% humidity.) Solar panels are by Eddie O’Meara from Munster Solar.
Among the household appliances there is a built-in ironing board and a drying cabinet for drying / aerating clothes (fairly standard in Sweden), which reduces the need for ironing. The house also has a central vacuum system. (Is Oscar a little disappointed to see that there is no Swedish robot vacuum cleaner with which it could create a relationship?)
The house – which could easily serve as a forest home in Canada or the northern states of the United States – has a painted wood exterior, light yellow and white, made in durable Jotun colors. The attic has crescent-shaped gable windows high up, which provide light into the 500 sqm large attic, while strong drainpipes and gutters in metal are curved.
There are also storage options on the ground floor and first floor and the garage has a floor attic while the garage / office / shop has its own underfloor heating.
In terms of space, there is a hall / foyer next to a curved ash staircase, three adjoining reception rooms, with wide patio doors to the sandstone patio and a curved energy-efficient NIBE stove in one of the interconnected rooms (in an inner corner, to extract every calorie of heat). The kitchen has tiles from Fired Earth in the UK between units by Kvanum Kok AB, one of Sweden’s most reputable manufacturers.
There are extensive internal views (including one from front to back), with few corridors, and the overall feeling is of warmth and light – both can be on top in Sweden during the long dark winters if they are not remedied and maximized by good house design.
Color is retained to display objects. Otherwise, the walls are mostly white and the ceiling (2.7 m high at ground level) is in lime-washed wooden sheet to allow traces of the grain of the wood to penetrate. Wooden floors are in wide plank oak and floor tiles are mostly Italian.
The interior includes blinds, square fabrics and stripes, quite typical Swedish or Gustavian design in muted shades, and it all works with a mix of old / antique furniture and more modern equivalents.
Nils-Ove and Margaret have also lived in Bahrain, Kuwait, Iran and Australia, as well as Sweden and Ireland, so there is an eclectic mix of finishes and furniture that have made themselves very much at home here, including some very nice office furniture from the 20th century in rosewood that can be purchased with the house.
Sherry Fitz’s Ms McDonnell and Ms O’Mahony conclude her long sales brochure cozy and say that No. 10 Glenrichmond will arouse both interest and bidding, saying that it is “essentially Scandinavian in both design and functionality, a completely unique home in a very private and private area, beautifully landscaped Cork site ”.
JUDGMENT: If it made sense to build like this in 2000, how much more comforting and sensible is it now, in the midst of a climate and energy crisis? Evangelical saleswoman Margaret Sheeran says that wooden houses of this standard in indigenous Scandinavian climates last for centuries and will similarly last for generations when properly rooted in Ireland.