The city of Kuopio is continuously retrofitting and constructing educational buildings, which by volume represent about one third of all public buildings. In order to establish environmentally sound building practices in the public sector, the new school project of Pirtti Elementary School has been established. The school demonstrates an advanced energy efficient design and energy saving technologies and products implemented in modern architecture, durable and low emission materials, and energy efficient building services systems and advanced control technologies applied in a comprehensive school building project. The advanced and integrated control technologies compensate the rising costs of modern architecture in new public buildings, increasing electrical devices and rising demand of lighting and indoor air quality and comfort.

As Finland is situated in one of the coldest, and in wintertime one of the darkest regions of Europe, energy for heating and lightning is the key issue of sustainable building practices in this area. Hence the school has put much effort into a total energy solution for the building. The system operate according to the needs and conditions in every room of the school, and therefore suitable for buildings where the loading changes significantly such as schools, offices, meeting facilities, restaurants and hotels.

It is designed to utilise incoming solar radiation and to minimise transmission losses by extensive insulation, however it is particularly two other energy solutions that are salient for this project:

• District heating system
• Indoor climate management system

For further information see also:
http://iis.kuopio.fi/tevi/tilak/pirtti/front_page.html

 

 

 

Monitoring Scheme:

Building period:	Work started: June 1997
	Work finised: August 1998
Monitoring period:	1999
Monitoring results:	Pirtti Elementary School with a total floor area of 4,900 m2.
	Parameter	Norms	Predicted	Monitored
	Heat: (kWh/m2)	169,5	76,0	119,8
	Electricity: (kWh/m2)	49,9	28,0	45,0
	Water: (m3/m2)	0,51	0,36	0,40
Other Results/ archievements	First of all it was a challenge in this pilot project to introduce energy efficient technologies to minimise costs of modern architecture, which often causes higher energy costs due to non-traditional building expressions, facades, room designs etc. During completing the Pirtti Elementary School it became evident to involve pupils in monitoring the use of energy, water, and waste. Gradually these activities became more and more part of the educational programmes for the children. The success involved transferring the schoolmaster to the central municipal school department for developing building concepts for the coming new schools and renovation projects. The schoolmaster is also supposed to develop and revise educational programmes for other municipal schools in Kuopio in order to include energy and environmental concerns as permanent part of the programmes. The schoolmaster has along with this work initiated several international cooperation projects to other schools aiming at renewable energy supply and environmental education as areas of high priority.

Further information:

Contact Person / Local authority / Builder	City of Kuopio Facility Management Department Asko Kauppinen, construction manager Suokatu 42 B, POB 1097, FIN-70111 KUOPIO Phone: +358 17 185601 Fax: +358 17 185606 e-mail: asko.kauppinen@kuopio.fi www.kuopio.fi
Technical consultants	Ramse Consulting Oy B.O. Box 40 FIN-00101 Helsinki Mr. Antero Punttila (working nowadays at Empower Ltd) Phone: +358 9 6930 6356, +358 50 502 5156 e-mail: antero.punttila@empower.fi www.empower.fi