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T he classic postcard image of the Finnish landscape features a picturesque red wooden house that was built by the homeowner. Seemingly quaint smoke rises from the chimney heat is obtained from the timber in the surrounding forest. Many people in Finland still live in timber homes, but a large proportion of them are now prefabricated, to a greater or smaller degree. Construction has also changed, as many people buy a home with "keys in hand", custom-made at the factory. Take, for example, a company called Finndomo. It is the largest manufacturer of timber-based family houses in the Nordic region, with an output that includes not only elements but also complete homes. The latter are fitted to the smallest detail ready for customers to move in (after erection on site, of course) and tailored to their specific wish list. Building with wood offers flexibility for future needs . houses. This way, houses can benefit from interconnected heating and cooling systems and take advantage of joint planning designed to make the most of sites and common areas." The importance of thinking that seeks to reduce the overall environmental impact of housing was highlighted in a recent project launched by Finndomo with VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. The project, which is aimed at looking at scenarios extending to 2020, underlines the need for people and communities to work together to develop new areas, from the municipal planning process onwards. In the shorter term, Finndomo will incorporate a number of energy efficiency enhancement features into its output from 2009, ahead of new regulations that will call for major reductions in energy consumption. This will see the introduction of windows with a significantly lower level of heat loss, and thicker insulation in walls, floors and roof spaces. squared figures, for instance. This shows what the people who live in our houses can achieve, but a good structure is only part of the story. Adjusting room temperatures by even just one degree up or down can have a big impact on the size of your energy bill." Efficiency tomorrow's norm Improving the energy efficiency of buildings and communities is also one of the core themes of the Sustainable Community programme launched by Tekes, the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation. This initiative will look at how community structure, buildings, energy and the environment interact with each other. Its objective is to promote new business models, service concepts, and technologies. "How and where we build, and how we live and travel as part of our daily life, are closely inter-related," says Programme Manager Jarmo J. Heinonen, "and will become even more critical in the future, as populations move to urban areas in increasing numbers, particularly in countries such as China and India, for instance." Ambitious targets Compared to traditional house building, prefabrication offers a number of advantages, not the least of which is freedom from the whims of the weather in terms of materials, structures and personnel. It also allows energy efficiency to be builtin from the start. Improved energy efficiency has been singled out as a clear target by Finndomo, according to the company's Vice President, Production Timo Jääskeläinen. "We've been ahead of the regulations for some time, and we see this area very much as an opportunity for us. We're living in a world of rising energy prices and one that is increasingly concerned about global warming. We want to set the pace in offering solutions that address this challenge effectively." Jääskeläinen provides some specific details: "We've targeted houses that are essentially self-sufficient in terms of their energy needs as our long-term goal. We believe that this will probably be most easily achievable in a country with a climate and population density like Finland's by focusing on small groups of A great building material "These improvements will enable the `classic' timber house to leverage even more of the intrinsic benefits of this type of construction, such as the fact that wood is a renewable resource that binds significant quantities of carbon dioxide and is produced with a relatively low level of energy input compared to many other materials," Jääskeläinen points out. "Building with wood is also great when it comes to designing for future needs. As family needs change, it's easy to remove or add partition walls." This flexibility is also a feature of Finndomo's approach to heating, as it is up to the customer to decide whether they want to opt for district heat, wood pellets, geothermal heat pumps, or other systems. "What we aim to do is achieve specific targets in our products, in terms of typical annual kilowatt hour per metre "The design of houses, how they look, and how they work as homes will never be displaced as their prime selling-points. It's clear, although their energy footprint and their overall environmental impact are becoming more and more important for buyers," continues Jääskeläinen. "It's a very similar situation to what's already happened with home appliances. Very few people today will even look at refrigerators or washing machines that aren't A+ or A++ products in terms of energy use. And buildings, appliances and systems included, account for a whole lot more of our energy usage around 40 per cent in industrialised countries like Finland at the last count." FOCUS 15
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