Residential buildings in Helsinki, Finland to switch to geothermal heating
City view, Helsinki/ Finland (source: flickr/ Ville Hyvönen, creative commons)
Carlo Cariaga
20 Sep 2022
Rental housing provider SATO Corporation has undertook the transition of residential buildings in the Reimarla district of Helsinki, Finland to geothermal heating.
A block of rental homes consisting of nine buildings with 171 homes in the Reimarla district of Helsinki, Finland will be switching over from district heating to geothermal heating. This transition was headed by SATO Corporation (SATO), one of Finland’s largest rental housing providers.
Covering around 2 hectares of land, the transition of the Reimarla buildings required an investment of EUR 1.5 million. “Our geothermal project kicked off in 2020 and the entire area will be done by 2023. We are talking about a very large number of homes, which makes this project one of a kind in all of Finland,” said SATO Technical Director Jari Kanervo, who is also heading the technical life cycle team at SATO responsible for building projects in relation to energy, building services and modernisation.
With the boost in efficiency provided by the geothermal system, nine buildings in Reimarla will be using the same amount of energy for heating as three buildings using the old district heating system. Around 40 wells have been drilled, each to a depth of around 300 meters.
By the end of 2022, SATO aims to have ground source heat pumps installed in 20 properties. “We are about to reach a huge milestone any day now, when SATO’s last remaining property that still uses heating energy from fossil fuels switches over to geothermal heat, leaving SATO properties wholly free of ties to fossil fuels for heating,” Kanervo says.
Source: SATO
