FAQ

Hapi Homes Ireland was set up by Tom Sheridan, Liam O'Farrell and Mary O'Brien. Tom, brings 25 years of housing delivery across Ireland, the UK and Australia, including involvement in the delivery of over 5,000 light-gauge steel homes in Australia. Liam, our COO, also runs Waterloo Homes (waterloohomes.ie), the Dublin builder and developer behind high-quality schemes across the city.

Hapi Homes Ireland is a separate, independent Irish company. Mary O'Brien also co-founded Hapi Homes in the US (hapihomes.com) with Mohamed Ahmed, but the two businesses are distinct, with their own ownership,and operations. Since 2022, the US company has delivered precision-built, light-gauge steel homes across the US, Bulgaria, Ukraine and the Caribbean, including rapid emergency housing alongside the Red Cross, governments and NGOs, cutting build times from 7+ months to as little as 12 weeks.

Hapi Homes Ireland brings that same proven, tech-led building model to Ireland, led on the ground by Tom and Liam.

Hapi Homes Ireland designs and delivers homes, standard layouts from our range or one-off custom designs. Every Hapi home is A-rated, fixed-price, and delivered turnkey in a fraction of the time a traditional build takes.

We're for the people Irish housing has stopped working for. The first-time buyer priced out of their home town. The family who want a granny flat on the side garden. The couple ready to build their forever home in a town that means something. For all of them, we design and deliver beautifully built, A-rated homes, energy-efficient, fixed-price, and finished quicker than a traditional build.

2, 3 and 4 bedroom houses; duplexes and garden rooms. People building their forever home, who want it designed from scratch around the way they live, the site they've chosen, and the budget they have to spend. Whether it's a standard layout or a fully custom design, every Hapi Home is built to the same high performance standard.

Traditional construction is sequential and fragmented, every phase depends on the last. Hapi reverses that.

• Decisions are made upfront, not on-site
• Systems are pre-coordinated, not improvised
• Materials arrive ready to install, not assembled piece by piece

The result is faster delivery, more predictable costs, and fewer delays.

Both. We manufacture precision-engineered panel systems in a controlled factory environment, and we deliver finished homes on the ground coordinated by our team, certified to Irish standards, and warrantied like any other new home.

Either. Most of our customers go turnkey, we deliver a finished home. If you'd prefer to manage your own build, we can handle the design, planning permission, and delivery of the kit to hand over to your contractor for fit-out. Some self-builders even DIY parts of the internal finish work. The earlier you tell us how you want to work, the smoother it runs.

Across the Republic of Ireland and the UK. We deliver nationwide.

Start at hapihomes.ie, and check out our design, or and a Design Studio session. We'll review your site, planning status, services, ground conditions walk you through our design range, and give you an indicative budget and timeline.

No, we're a panelised system, which is different from a modular system. Modular means whole rooms or 'pods' arrive on a truck. Panelised means individual factory-finished wall, floor and roof panels arrive flat-packed and are assembled on a prepared foundation. Panelised gives you the factory precision of modular without the design constraints, Hapi homes don't look or feel like a 'prefab'. They look and feel like beautifully built homes, because that's what they are.

From factory order to keys, typically 16-20 weeks: 4 weeks panel fabrication in the factory, 4 weeks on-site assembly to weather-tight, and 4 weeks internal fit-out.

Start at hapihomes.ie and book a Design Studio session. We'll review your site (planning status, services, ground conditions), walk you through our design range, and give you an indicative budget and timeline.

We can help. Many of our customers buy a Hapi Home on a site sourced through one of our partners or off-market sites we know of through our network. Tell us where you want to live and we'll tell you what's possible. We can also point you to local-authority Ready-to-Build sites under the Croí Cónaithe scheme, and help you assess whether a site you're considering is right for a Hapi Home.

Yes, this is one of the fastest-growing parts of what we do. A self-contained Hapi unit on land you already own, used for an adult child, an ageing parent, a home office or a rental, is typically delivered in 12–16 weeks once planning (or exempt-development confirmation) is in place. The Vacant Property Refurbishment Grant and recent Section 4 exempted-development rules for backyard homes are very supportive, talk to us about your specific situation.

Yes. Our panel system works as well for an extension as it does for your home. Because the panels arrive finished and assemble fast, your home is disrupted for a fraction of the time a traditional extension takes.

Foundations and site works; the full LGS panel structure to weather-tight; airtight build-up with high-performance insulation; triple-glazed windows and external doors; A-rated heat pump with underfloor heating downstairs and radiators upstairs; mechanical ventilation with heat recovery (MVHR); solar PV (optional upgrade); fully fitted kitchen with integrated appliances; tiled bathrooms and ensuites; wardrobes to all bedrooms; internal joinery and decoration to a chosen palette; EV-ready electrical infrastructure.

Yes, you can choose layout, orientation, window positions, kitchen and bathroom finishes, flooring, external cladding (timber, brick slip, render) and roof profile. If you want something genuinely bespoke, we can do that too, we'll just be honest about what it does to budget and timeline.

Yes. Every Hapi home is designed, built and signed off to comply with the Irish Building Regulations and the Building Control Amendment Regulations (BCAR). Your Assigned Certifier signs off the design and the construction in the normal way, Hapi panels are simply a different way of meeting the same standards a block/timber built home meets.

Every Hapi home is A-rated, all Hapi Homes are passive by design. A factory-built envelope is significantly more airtight than a traditional build, so heating and hot-water bills are low. You'll receive your BER certificate at completion.

A passive house is a home built to such a high standard of energy performance that it stays warm year-round with almost no active heating. The principles are simple: very high levels of insulation, an extremely airtight building envelope, high-performance triple-glazed windows, mechanical ventilation with heat recovery (MVHR), and detailed elimination of thermal bridges. The standard was developed in Germany in the 1990s and is now the international benchmark for energy-efficient housing.

Yes, by design. Every Hapi Home is built to passive house principles. A super-insulated, airtight envelope. Triple-glazed windows. MVHR ventilation. Thermal-bridge-free junctions, modelled and verified before the panels leave the factory. The result is a home that stays warm in winter and cool in summer with very little active heating, where indoor air quality is continuously controlled, and where heating and hot-water bills are a fraction of those in a traditional Irish house.

A formally certified Passive House (the Passivhaus standard from the Passive House Institute in Germany) is a slightly different thing, it requires submission to the Institute and modelling against the PHPP framework. Our standard specification delivers the comfort, the bills and the air quality of a passive house without that additional certification step. For clients who want the formal Passivhaus certificate, we can design and deliver to that standard too, tell us at design stage.

Yes. Nearly Zero Energy Building (NZEB) has been the standard for new Irish homes since November 2019, and every Hapi Home exceeds the current NZEB requirement. The combination of an A-rated envelope, heat pump heating, MVHR ventilation, and solar PV gets us there as standard.

Steel doesn't burn. Our panels and the build-up of insulation, plasterboard and finishes are fire-tested and certified to the relevant European standards (EN 13501 reaction-to-fire, plus fire-resistance ratings to EN 1364/EN 1365 as appropriate to the application). Full test certs are available for technical reviewers.

Every Hapi home comes with a structural warranty backed by HomeBond or Premier Guarantee (10 years on structure, 2 years on water and smoke ingress). On top of that, Hapi Homes Ireland provides a 24-month defects period on non-structural finishes, with appliances and fixtures covered under manufacturer warranties.

Yes, the same as any new home. Some backyard homes and small extensions can fall under exempted development, but always confirm with your local authority or with us before assuming. We design and submit planning.

Yes. Our architects prepare the design, drawings, and supporting documents to a high standard, and we manage the application through to grant of permission.

Before our assembly crew arrives, the site needs: foundations cast and cured to engineer's drawings; services capped off at slab level (water, wastewater, ESB, fibre). We'll give you a written 'ready-for-delivery' checklist 6 weeks before assembly.

Not much. Steel isn’t impacted by weather. Once panels are in place and the roof is on (typically within 3 to 5 days of arrival on site), the home is weather-tight.

Same as any new home. Hapi Homes coordinates the connection of water, wastewater, ESB Networks electricity, fibre broadband, in the normal way.

Light-gauge steel (LGS), also known as cold-formed steel, is a structural system made from thin, high-strength steel sections that are precision-formed for residential construction.

In a Hapi home:
• Walls, floors and roof structures are formed from cold-formed steel panels
• Components are CNC-cut, pre-engineered and pre-coordinated
• Panels are delivered flat-packed and assembled on site

The result is a site-built home constructed from a precision-engineered system, rather than assembled piece by piece on site.

Three reasons. Precision, steel sections are dimensionally stable; timber moves with moisture. Strength-to-weight, steel achieves longer spans and slimmer walls. Durability, steel doesn't rot, warp or shrink.

Steel is the structural skeleton. Around it, a Hapi home contains everything you'd expect, insulation, plasterboard, timber joinery, ceramic tile, stone, brick slip or render externally as you choose. The home looks and feels like a beautifully built home.

No, the opposite. Long spans, open-plan layouts, large openings and cantilevers are easier in steel than in timber or block. The design discipline that the panel grid imposes is about repeatability and cost, not aesthetics, within the grid, design freedom is wide.

Steel is one of the most recycled materials in the world, more than 90% of structural steel is recovered and recycled, and Hapi panels use a high recycled-content steel. The lifecycle carbon comparison vs. timber or block is nuanced, but the long service life, the recyclability at end of life, and the very high in-use energy performance combine to give Hapi Homes a strong whole-life carbon profile.

No. Steel itself is inert, it does not off-gas. Indoor air quality in a Hapi Home is driven by the MVHR system, which continuously supplies filtered fresh air and extracts stale air, recovering most of the heat in the process. Air quality is typically better than in a traditional leaky home.

Hapi homes in Ireland are designed using established engineering frameworks, including:
• The Eurocodes (EN 1990–1999), as adopted in Ireland with Irish National Annexes, particularly EN 1993-1-3 for cold-formed steel
• The Irish Building Regulations and Technical Guidance Documents (TGD A–M)
• BCAR, the Building Control Amendment Regulations, for design and construction sign-off
• EN 1090-1 CE marking of structural steel components

These define structural performance, fire and acoustic performance, energy compliance, and overall fitness for purpose.

Cold-formed structural steel sheet to EN 10346, with a zinc or zinc-aluminium-magnesium metallic coating for corrosion protection. Yield strengths typically S280 to S550, steel grade is matched to the structural demand of each element.

Higher-strength grades are used where loads, spans or floor depths demand them, multi-storey load-bearing walls, long-span floor joists, lintels over wide openings. Lower grades suffice for internal partitions and lightly loaded elements. The structural engineer specifies grade per element.

Every steel section is supplied with a metallic protective coating (typically Z275 or Magnelis ZM310). In service, panels sit inside a fully insulated, vapour-controlled, weather-tight build-up, they are not exposed to moisture. With those two layers of defence, cold-formed steel framing has expected design lives well in excess of 60 years.

Steel conducts heat, we address it by design. A continuous external insulation layer sits outside the steel frame (the steel stays inside the warm envelope), thermal break tapes are used at panel junctions, and detailed psi-value calculations are done for every junction type. The result is thermal-bridge performance equivalent to, or better than, a timber-framed equivalent.

Acoustic performance is a function of the whole build-up, not just the frame. Hapi wall and floor build-ups exceed the airborne and impact-sound requirements in TGD E (Sound), verified by test. Party walls in attached and multi-unit homes achieve well above the minimum DnT,w+Ctr.

Steel is non-combustible (Euroclass A1). Hapi wall, floor and roof build-ups are fire-tested and certified to EN 13501 reaction-to-fire classes, with fire-resistance ratings of REI 30, REI 60 or REI 90 depending on element and use. Full test certificates available on request.

Every project is engineered specifically, wind, snow and dead/live loads are calculated to the Irish National Annex to the Eurocodes, panels are sized to the structural model, and every element is signed off by a chartered structural engineer.

Mechanical, electrical and plumbing services route through pre-formed service voids and pre-coordinated penetrations in the panel system. Because the framing geometry is known to the millimetre before anything arrives on site, MEP first-fix is faster, cleaner and avoids the cutting and chasing of traditional builds.

Well over 100 years for the structural frame, properly designed and built into a controlled envelope. Steel does not rot, shrink, warp or harbour pests.

Cold-formed steel is rolled at room temperature from thin sheet, light, precise, ideal for residential framing. Hot-rolled steel is heated and rolled, heavier sections, used for beams and columns. Hapi uses cold-formed for panels and hot-rolled where structural demand requires it (e.g. transfer beams).

Financing in Ireland is typically structured in stages:
• Early stage - feasibility and design (self-funded or initial deposit)
• Post-planning - mortgage approval in principle (AIP) and formal loan offer
• Construction - standard stage payments under a self-build mortgage, or single drawdown at completion for turnkey purchases

Hapi homes are treated as site-built homes for lending purposes, so standard Irish construction-to-permanent mortgages and self-build mortgages apply.

Yes. Because Hapi homes are assembled on a permanent foundation, and carry a HomeBond or Premier Guarantee structural warranty, they are classified by Irish lenders as site-built homes, not modular, not mobile, not classified separately. AIB, Bank of Ireland, PTSB, Avant, ICS, Haven and the other main lenders all lend on this basis.

Because lender classification determines two things: the loan products available to you, and the loan-to-value (LTV) you can borrow. A site-built classification gives you access to standard residential mortgage products at standard LTVs, up to 90% for first-time buyers, 80% for second and subsequent buyers.

Because 'modular', 'prefab' and 'panelised' are sometimes used loosely. A modular home is built in volumetric pods and craned onto a site. A Hapi home is assembled from individual panels on a permanent foundation, a fundamentally different category. We can provide your lender with the structural warranty paperwork and the Architect's certification on request, which removes any ambiguity.

No. Hapi Homes are insured at standard residential rates by all of the main Irish home insurers (Aviva, Zurich, AXA, AIG, FBD, AA, Allianz). The combination of non-combustible steel structure, professional installation, and warranty often makes Hapi Homes easy to insure.

Yes. A bank valuer assesses the home on the same basis as any new house: floor area, specification, energy rating, location and comparable sales. The A-rated BER often supports a stronger valuation than a comparable older home.

It happens occasionally, usually because someone hasn't seen a modern LGS panelised home before. We provide a standard documentation pack that resolves it in every case we've seen.

Yes, expect fees of €1,500–€2,500 plus VAT and outlays.

Solicitor fees (€1,500–€2,500 + VAT); Land Registry fees (€175–€900); lender valuation fee (€150–€185); home insurance from drawdown; life insurance for mortgage; mortgage protection.

New-build residential supply-and-fit work in Ireland attracts the reduced 13.5% VAT rate. So a Hapi turnkey Home is invoiced at 13.5%. If you appoint your own main contractor and we supply panels only (without installation), the supply-only portion attracts 23% VAT, the standard rate.

For a standard turnkey home:
15% on signing contracts
Stage payments are tied to objective milestones with engineer's sign-off.

Yes. Irish self-build mortgages release funds in stages tied to Architect's certificates, and our payment schedule maps onto the standard stage release pattern. For turnkey purchases drawn down at completion, the schedule is simpler still, one drawdown at the end. Your mortgage broker confirms the structure with your lender at offer stage.

Yes, for first-time buyers buying a new home priced at €500,000 or less, Help to Buy can refund up to €30,000 (or 10% of the purchase price, whichever is lower) against the income tax and DIRT you've paid over the last four years. You apply through Revenue's myAccount portal. Where Hapi is supplying a new home to you directly, the scheme applies in the normal way.

Yes, in most cases. The First Home Scheme is a shared-equity scheme run by the State and participating banks, it can fund up to 30% of the purchase price (20% if combined with Help to Buy), reducing the mortgage you need. Eligibility depends on the property type and regional price ceiling — see firsthomescheme.ie. We'll confirm eligibility for your specific home before contracts.

If you're buying or refurbishing a vacant property in a town or village, the Croí Cónaithe (Towns) Fund provides up to €50,000 for a refurbishment and up to €70,000 where the property is derelict.

Yes, Hapi Homes are designed to qualify for the relevant SEAI grants (solar PV grant, EV charging grant where applicable). Some grants are only available on existing homes for retrofit; new-build Hapi Homes already exceed the standards those grants are designed to lift older homes to.

A Government scheme that lets you buy a serviced site from your local authority, fully connected to water, wastewater, electricity and a public road, at a price up to €30,000 below market value. You build your own home on the site and live in it as your principal private residence. Funded through Croí Cónaithe (Towns) Fund and administered by individual councils.

Do I qualify?
You qualify if you'll live in the home as your main residence, have tax clearance from Revenue, haven't already bought a site under the scheme, and can hit the deadlines (apply for planning within 3 months of approval, start building within 12 months of grant). First-time buyers and fresh-start applicants (divorced, separated, post-insolvency) are prioritised, but second-time buyers, downsizers and returning emigrants all qualify too.

How much will I save?
Up to €30,000 off the open-market value of the site. It's a price reduction, not a grant — you simply pay less for the site. There's a clawback if you sell or rent within 10 years (100% in the first 5 years, 75% in years 5–10, nothing after that).

Can I combine it with Help to Buy?
Yes. First-time buyers building a new home priced at €500,000 or less can claim up to €30,000 from Help to Buy on top of the Ready to Build site discount, up to €60,000 of combined support. Self-build mortgages from all main Irish lenders work with the scheme. It does not combine with the First Home Scheme (FHS only applies to homes bought from a developer).

Why does Hapi suit Ready to Build?
The scheme's deadlines are tight, 3 months to planning, 12 months to start of build. A factory-precise Hapi Home goes from order to keys in 20 weeks, which gives you a much wider safety margin than a traditional block build.

Yes. Hapi Homes is designed to support developers, contractors, AHBs, councils and investors who want to deliver housing more efficiently using a pre-engineered system, either as frames or a full kit.

We work with:
• Residential developers
• General contractors
• Approved Housing Bodies (AHBs)
• Local authorities and Government bodies
• Landowners and project sponsors
• NGOs and not-for-profits

Hapi is particularly effective for:
• Residential developments
• Infill housing and site subdivision
• Back-garden housing
• Multi-unit projects (duplexes, terraced homes, clusters)
• Social, affordable and cost-rental schemes
• Rapid housing delivery/emergency house

The system is built for repeatability and scale, not one-off inefficiency.

Multi-unit delivery is where panelised construction really earns its keep. Design and factory output are configured for repetition, on-site assembly runs in parallel, and quality is consistent from unit one to unit one hundred.

Yes. Per-unit cost falls with volume, through factory scheduling, shared design effort, optimised logistics, and crew efficiency. Indicative volume bands are available to qualified trade partners on request.

Flexible. We can act as: a system supplier (panels delivered to your site, your team assembles), a structural delivery partner (we deliver to weather-tight; you handle fit-out and finishes), or a full turnkey delivery partner (we hand over completed, certified homes). Choose the model that fits your project.

Yes. We can structure framework agreements, multi-site rollouts, and programme partnerships with councils, AHBs and institutional investors.

Three reasons we hear most. Programme certainty, factory-built shells don't wait on weather or trades. Cost certainty, a known panel package replaces a long shopping list of trades and variations. And A-rated performance out of the box, your scheme is NZEB-compliant without specification gymnastics.

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Typically, 3-4 months from land selection to move-in (excluding permitting, which varies by region).

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This FAQ is for general information only and does not constitute legal, tax, financial or planning advice. Scheme thresholds (Help to Buy, First Home Scheme, Croí Cónaithe, Central Bank lending rules), BER methodology and building regulations change over time, confirm current details with Revenue, your solicitor, your mortgage broker and your local authority. Last updated: May 2026.