The Extractor Fan Is a Hole You Paid For

The kitchen is the one room that makes weather on purpose. Kettle. Pan. Wet coats on the chair. Over the hob there is a white plastic square, about the size of a cereal box, with a grille that faces the garden. Someone in the group chat has written “extractor sorted”. That square is not a gadget. That square is a hole.

A coat with a drinking straw through the chest is not a coat. Heat does not applaud the fan. Heat leaves through the gap around the pipe.

The pipe that goes through the wall

Let us invent a person. We will call her Deirdre. 1975 semi, Cabra. Yellow brick, a cavity filled in 2016, later a cream wrap on the front. The kitchen sits on the back gable. The fan over the hob was fitted by a brother-in-law with a core drill and a Saturday. The plaster around it is a cold ring the colour of tea. After the hopper job she found white beads in the frying pan.

The beads were from the wall. A cavity is two leaves of masonry and a gap. An extractor is a hole through both leaves. The proper sentence between those facts is a sleeve: a rigid liner that joins the inner hole to the outer hole, sealed to both faces, so the gap stays a gap and the steam goes to the garden. Deirdre’s Saturday did not include a sleeve. It included two holes and a flexible hose that sagged in the dark like a sock.

Heat does not queue at the grille

Insulation only works if it is continuous. A wall is a fence. A duct through the wall is a gate. Continuity dies at a gate that was never framed.

U-value is the score for the field: how easily heat walks through a square metre of wall. Psi-value is the score for the line, and for a small opening that is not a window. A beautiful U-value with a rude hole over the hob is a winter coat with a straw through the heart. The fan can be excellent. The annulus can still be a wind tunnel.

Technical Guidance Document F is not a thermal lecture. It is a ventilation lecture. It says a kitchen has to throw steam and grease at the outside air, not at the cupboard behind the plaster. That sentence is correct. It is also how a well-meant hole becomes a cave if nobody puts a liner in it. The Department’s own home-ventilation note is the plain-English version: moisture has to leave. It does not say “drill two holes and hope”.

This is not a meter cabinet, a lintel, a window reveal, a party wall, an air brick, a wet cavity, or slumped fill. Those are other holes. An air brick is the wall’s nose. An extractor is a pipe you bought. The hole around the pipe is the problem you are still paying for. The live piece on the meter box that is a hole in the coat is a different Saturday: a plastic door at hip height. You can close every cabinet and still dump heat through a drinking straw over the cooker. They are not the same job.

Two costumes, same missing sleeve

There are two costumes in Dublin, and they fail the same exam.

Costume one: cavity fill. Two leaves, a gap, a hopper, a weather of beads. The gap is the job. The extractor is not the gap. The extractor is a hole sitting in both leaves. If there is no sleeve, the hopper is pouring weather into a cave that opens on the frying pan. Some crews leave a polite halo around the fan because nobody wanted to pump beads into a motor. Fill the field and the camera looks dark. Around the fan the camera looks like a window. The kitchen plaster is the inside of that window.

A proper fill treats the sleeve as a neighbour: insulation can sit against a liner. “Do not fill the fan” is not a licence to leave a cave the size of a saucepan.

Costume two: the wrap. Boards on the outer face. Render. A cream house. External wall insulation Dublin as a weather coat, not a paint job. The coat is correct for the field. The coat is a lie at the grille if the boards stop around the cowl like a tailor who got bored at the pocket. You cannot bury the fan in the wrap: steam has to leave. Bring the insulation to the duct, extend the sleeve through the new thickness, keep the cowl usable, and seal the annulus. A postage stamp of original brick around a white grille is a hole you paid to look finished.

The second-wall ticket in 2026 is how a 2016 hopper and a 2026 wrap end up on the same house. If you already used the cavity grant, you can still talk about a wrap. Close the hole or you own two certificates and the same cold ring over the hob.

The cold ring on the kitchen plaster is physics

Mould is not a lifestyle. Mould is a surface that got cold enough, long enough, in a room that makes water the way kitchens make water: pans, kettles, the washing on the radiator. The field of an insulated wall stays above the trouble. An empty sleeve, or no sleeve at all, drops. Indoor air hits the plaster that rings the fan, drops its drink, and the hob starts a hobby in a circle.

Deirdre wipes. The paint is not insulation. The wall is still “done”.

You can feel it without a camera. The plaster around the extractor is a different temperature to the plaster a metre down the run of units. On a west wind the grille breathes garden into the room when the motor is off. That breath is the quote that stopped at the plastic square.

What the camera is looking for

You cannot diagnose a kitchen vent from the footpath if the wrap looks complete.

A surveyor looks at the grille. On a wrap: do the boards meet the duct, or is there a postage stamp of original brick around a white cowl? Was the sleeve extended through the new thickness? On a cavity: is there a rigid liner sealed to both leaves, with insulation packed to the sleeve, or two holes and a sagging hose? A thermal camera is a hole-detector: the field is dark, the fan wears a halo, and the kitchen plaster wears a matching ring.

If the person quoting you will not look at the extractor, they are quoting a field. A field is not a house. A house is a field plus the opening that is not a window.

The money, without folklore

These are the current individual-grant figures, taken from SEAI’s own wall page. They are fixed by house type, not a percentage of a quote, and they are not a prize for wrapping a field and leaving a straw over the hob.

Cavity wall insulation, standard: apartment €700, mid-terrace €850, semi-detached or end-of-terrace €1,300, detached €1,800. That money is for a cavity that deserves a fill: clean, dry, empty — and actually filled up to the sleeve, not filled except for a polite cave. Higher cavity figures exist if you are on a qualifying welfare payment: apartment €900, mid-terrace €1,100, semi-detached or end-of-terrace €1,700, detached €2,300.

The wrap is €3,000 for an apartment, €3,500 for a mid-terrace, €6,000 for a semi-detached or end-of-terrace, and €8,000 for a detached house. Internal lining is €1,500 / €2,000 / €3,500 / €4,500 across those same four types. The official wall numbers live on the SEAI wall insulation grant page. The plain-English table, edited 28 May 2026, lives on the Citizens Information page for Better Energy Homes.

Attic insulation is still the hat, and the hat still comes first. Standard: apartment €1,100, mid-terrace €1,400, semi-detached or end-of-terrace €1,500, detached €2,000. Enhanced, if you qualify: €1,400 / €1,800 / €1,900 / €2,500. What you pay after the grant, on a normal Dublin attic done properly, is typically €300 to €1,500. Do the hat. Then argue about the walls, including the pipe through the coat.

The house has to have been built and occupied before 2011. Approval comes before work. If work starts before SEAI says yes, the grant is gone. If SEAI does not approve, no work starts, and you pay nothing. That is the grant guarantee as Retrofit Dublin runs it. Retrofit Dublin is SEAI-registered. The phone is 01-233-7477. The 15-year guarantee is on the insulation, not on the folklore that a cream elevation is a finished vent.

Technical Guidance Document L is the energy rulebook: U-values for the field, and Appendix D for the lines, because a wall is not only a wall. A default y-value of 0.15 is the polite way of saying “we did not draw the junctions.” 0.08 is the number you get when the junctions look like the drawings. Extractor sleeves are junctions. The Irish Times set out the 2026 second-wall change when the package landed. RTÉ put the insulation-grant increases in the same January announcement. Neither of them is going to write you a hymn about a white plastic square over the hob. That is our job.

Close the hole, then argue about the coat

A whole-home energy strategy is an order of operations. You stop the leaks. Then you change how you make the heat. The cheapest first move in most Dublin houses is still the hat. Then the walls, including the sleeve. Cavity if the camera says the gap is clean, dry, empty, and the beads actually reach the liner. A wrap if the cavity is the wrong job, with the boards returned to the duct so the coat does not stop at the straw. Then the machines.

Retrofit Dublin does home energy upgrades in that order on purpose: fabric, then systems. A heat pump behind a cream wall and a glowing ring over the hob is a very efficient device heating a drinking straw. Do not buy an expensive machine to feed a hole you refused to close.

You can keep the quote that treated the extractor as someone else’s invoice. The field can be fine. The fan can still be a hole. Do the hat. Look at the grille. Apply before anyone drills. If SEAI does not approve, no work starts, pay nothing. Phone 01-233-7477.

If the extractor is still a hole you paid for and the kitchen plaster is still a cold ring, call 01-233-7477 and Claim Your Grants.