Building a house in Finland

[DennisCA]

Since there was some interest in seeing this I am posting about our house building project. Long story short is we found out we where having kids (yes, plural) and that lead to us deciding to build a house, previously we lived in a 73.5 m2 apartment.

Step 1 was finding a lot to build on, we decided to build in a rural county as it was closer to my work than living in the city, and my fiances family lived in the same place, my own family lived much closer this way as well. We saw a lot of lots and almost bought one but the seller backed out, which in retrospect was good because or 2nd choice was much cheaper and real nice area. It was sold by the county itself at 4.30 euros / m2, looked like this before we did any work to it, 2340 square meters:

Step 2 was finding a house builder, that is to say we where looking for a company that sold ready house models and who could also build them. We looked a many models and companies and rejected most. I wanted a package that was as complete as possible because I did not have time & energy to deal with multiple contractors myself and coordinating it all. We also had as a requirment a cast concrete plate as a foundation with waterborne floor heating. The heating source also had to be a ground heat exchange pump.

We found a company that offered all this and also as they where sister company with an old finnish hardware chain they could offer things like laminate flooring, kitchen setup and everything else, we also got to meet with their interior decorators and set up and customize the rooms and kitchen and stuff like that. We also customized the house model from the start.

The house model we went with was called Peippo 137. 137 referring to the size of the house in m2, actual living area will be 121m2. We also added a free standing garage of 43m2. These are product pictures from the builder:

Step 3 is getting the permits and everything ready. To get a building permit we had to get the plans and energy certificates and a person that will act as project leader, we have to find & hire that guy ourselves in order to avoid conflicts of interest with the company, his interest is ours that is. In addition there are pre work, during work and after work inspections that have to be done and signed for with the county building inspector.

Step 4 is actually starting the construction. Here's the preparing work for the foundation, we've chopped down most of the trees and they will become firewood. We had to blast from the get go for the sewage lines and house itself because the bedrock was poking up through the ground, we also have to dig the pipes very deep to get under freezing depth, about 2 meters.

After that we can get the sewage and water lines laid down and towards the house location.

Then the site is filled with gravel of a specific size to help drainage, and vibrated down. Then we cast the outer foundation:

Concrete+insulation

Interior filled & vibrated and also exterior filled up:

The picture doesn't show it but insulation has been laid down on the ground outside the foundation before we filled it over in order to insulate the ground around the house for 1 meter outwards. Then we also laid a thick plastic over it. The black plastic you see around the foundation is also more plastic to protect it from water and moisture.

About all I have time for now, more later.

 

[finneyb]

Dennis,

More when you have time would be good.

A question - how does the ground heat exchange pump work effectively if you have to lay the pipes 2m deep to prevent freezing? Is the pump also 2m deep, if so how does the ground replenish the heat it takes out at such a depth

Brian

 

[RogerS]

Laying insulation outside the foundation footprint is intriguing. Why is that done?

 

[DennisCA]

The ground heat pump uses a separate borehole that is 130 meters deep actually, the pump is inside the house, this is an illustration:

Continuing the building, we do the same for the garage:

Then they raised the frame for the house itself:

Then they started on the roof to keep the rain out:

Outer dry wall is up:

Then insulation:

Garage is also progressing:

Meanwhile progress has been on going in the house, moisture barrier is up, insulation in the floor has been laid down, and the pipes for the floor heating, about ready to cast the floor plate now, the plate thus lies raised up from the ground and is insulated below and on the sides:

Concrete has been cast and allowed to dry enough to walk on, work's proceeding on the inside:

This is the end of november, there's a time jump to simetime after new years eve here due to us being away in helsinki with my younger twin son who needed heart surgery to correct a VSD. So I think I'll talk about the house in some more detail now rather than jump ahead. Here's a blue print that shows the house layout;

It's a 1-plane house and it has 4 bedrooms, livingroom, kitchen, bathroom+sauna, laundry room/technical area, the living room also has an accumulating masonry heater by finnish company Uunisepät, the foundation is reinforced to take it's weight of 1.25 metric tons. We customized the original plans by enlarging the terrace on the outside and made it wrap around the house, we also replaced the electric sauna heater with a wood fired one. Which in turn required the walls to the bathroom to be made from brick rather than wood as in the rest of the house.

 

[DennisCA]

Laying insulation outside the foundation footprint is intriguing. Why is that done?

It prevents the cold from getting in under the foundation, so the ground never freezes under the house which in addition to just saving energy in heating also minimizes movement from the ground thawing/freezing during spring and wintertime. We should have practically no ground movement as we're practically on bedrock. Also helps the drainage since less water will be getting in under the house. There's also underground drainage pipes going around the house and garage to help carry away water.

 

[RogerS]

Presumably you also put a lot of insulation underneath your concrete slab? i can see it vertically around the perimeter in one of your photos above. You seem to set great store with drainage. Is that a problem in FInland ? Or just a precautionary measure?

 

[DennisCA]

Yes there's insulation below the slab as well, 200mm of insulation below the plate.

I don't know if there's a particular problem in Finland compared to other countries, I guess it can be with the ground thawing and freezing we got, less water there is in the earth around your foundation the less the cold will affect it.

 

[RobinBHM]

I cant see the workshop for woodworking it must be coming a bit later in the build.

 

[finneyb]

Dennis,

Thanks for posting more photos. In return I will post more questions

1. Does the ground heat pump heat the water/liquid in the underfloor heating?
2. What % of the heating comes from the heat pump.
3. Both heat sources (ground pump and masonry accumulator) require electricity. I assume that electricity is supplied by overhead cables given that your location looks rural and therefore the cost of burying cables would be prohibitively expensive. Overhead electricity cables have been known to fail just when you need them most eg in an ice storm. Do you have a backup generator?

Hope that your son's operation went well.

Brian

 

[DennisCA]

Dennis,

Thanks for posting more photos. In return I will post more questions

1. Does the ground heat pump heat the water/liquid in the underfloor heating?
2. What % of the heating comes from the heat pump.
3. Both heat sources (ground pump and masonry accumulator) require electricity. I assume that electricity is supplied by overhead cables given that your location looks rural and therefore the cost of burying cables would be prohibitively expensive. Overhead electricity cables have been known to fail just when you need them most eg in an ice storm. Do you have a backup generator?

Hope that your son's operation went well.

Brian

Hi and thanks for asking, he is well now.
Yes the ground heat pump heats the entire house, both hot water and underfloor heating. It alone is enough to heat the house most of the year, the depth of the borehole was scaled to the size of the house when it was drilled. During winter when temperatures can drop to -20 or -30 Celsius it will have trouble keeping up so then it has an electric cartridge that can kick in and help, or we can fire up the masonry heater to help keep the indoor temp without requiring the use of additional electricity.

The masonry heater does not require any electricity, merely firewood, so it is the backup really, it does not heat the water, merely itself which then releases the heat over a long time, a traditional heating method here. Our electricty cables are also underground, we even have fiberoptic internet straight into the house (installed two weeks ago). It's a somewhat rural county, but they've put effort into the infrastructure for decades, a joint project with other coastal counties in this area of western finland has been active since the late 90s to install a fiberoptic cable "backbone".

 

[DennisCA]

I cant see the workshop for woodworking it must be coming a bit later in the build.

The garage will become my workshop for woodworking and other things, it will have a ~19m2 area which will become the primary place for woodworking, I hope it will be big enough, I will sometimes have to get my car in there too. There's also a 5.5m2 area, the smaller area I will keep heated year round and keep other more sensitive equipment in, it's going to be a smaller hobby room so to speak.

The garage is going to similarly insulated as the house has been, the small area should be cheaply heated with an electric oil element. I've some plans to make a simple solar panel for air heating in addition.

 

[DennisCA]

Some more photos, around this time of year it was getting dark before I was leaving work so I had to use the flash to get any usable photos:

Daylight picture, metal roof up on both buildings now:

Now there's a jump to around new years eve sometime, panelling is up:

Interior walls are being put up, can't see it but the interior walls are going to be insulated (rockwool) for sound proofing, they also get a plywood backing behind the interior drywall if we want to do things like put up pictures and whatnot.

Close up of the exterior:

The small roof over the door to the laundry room was an addition we also had made to the original plans.

Here's a winter image, one of the few days of proper winter we got this year

Gutters and a ladder has been installed, the ladder is a legal requirement:

Also a walk ladder on top of the roof:

Closeup of gutters:

And around this time the heat pump was delivered:

Few weeks later it got installed. took a while because we had to prep the floor where it will go, drying it out extra fast with infrared heater and dehumidifier, then we could put in the water barrier and tiles just for the spot the heat pump will be in. We're still drying the rest of the slab as I am writing this, I think we're ready to put in the rest of the floors next week or so. Humidity needs to drop below 85% or more in the slab.

Let's also have a look at the garage:

Inside:

 

[nathandavies]

very enjoyable post, it's interesting to see building variations from other countries. When is the expected finish date?

nathan

 

[gregmcateer]

That looks great. I echo Natahan's post about seeing the way it's done elsewhere.

I'm interested in the metal roof - all that lovely insulation below, yet a heat conductor for a roof? That seems to defy logic, so I'd love to know the reason.

Thanks for sharing your project and I hope your son keeps well.

Greg

 

[finneyb]

Dennis,

Thanks for posting more photos. In return I will post more questions

1. Does the ground heat pump heat the water/liquid in the underfloor heating?
2. What % of the heating comes from the heat pump.
3. Both heat sources (ground pump and masonry accumulator) require electricity. I assume that electricity is supplied by overhead cables given that your location looks rural and therefore the cost of burying cables would be prohibitively expensive. Overhead electricity cables have been known to fail just when you need them most eg in an ice storm. Do you have a backup generator?

Hope that your son's operation went well.

Brian

Hi and thanks for asking, he is well now.
Yes the ground heat pump heats the entire house, both hot water and underfloor heating. It alone is enough to heat the house most of the year, the depth of the borehole was scaled to the size of the house when it was drilled. During winter when temperatures can drop to -20 or -30 Celsius it will have trouble keeping up so then it has an electric cartridge that can kick in and help, or we can fire up the masonry heater to help keep the indoor temp without requiring the use of additional electricity.

The masonry heater does not require any electricity, merely firewood, so it is the backup really, it does not heat the water, merely itself which then releases the heat over a long time, a traditional heating method here. Our electricty cables are also underground, we even have fiberoptic internet straight into the house (installed two weeks ago). It's a somewhat rural county, but they've put effort into the infrastructure for decades, a joint project with other coastal counties in this area of western finland has been active since the late 90s to install a fiberoptic cable "backbone".

So the masonry heater is a fireplace ? http://www.stockfreeimages.com/p1/fireplace.html
When you used the word accumulator I was thinking it was an electrical storage heater - basically a box of bricks or masonry heated by cheaper overnight electricity which releases heat throughout the next day.

House - soon to be a home - looks good. Enjoy.

Brian

 

[RogerS]

I think they are more like this one, Brian

 

[DennisCA]

Almost, it looks like this:

I am not entirely sure about the terminology in english but the best translation I got was accumulating masonry heater.

Back on the chronological track though, we then got the drains:

Some indoor pictures

And about now the snow has melted away again, a very short winter, was more like a long autumn that stretched into a long spring

After that someone came and prepped the bathroom walls, still couldn't do anything with the floor due to moisture

After that we got the material delivery for the masonry heater/fireplace:

And the installation thereof:

Images show a double chimney that connects on the other side of the wall to the wood fires sauna heater:

 

[DennisCA]

very enjoyable post, it's interesting to see building variations from other countries. When is the expected finish date?

nathan

It's up in the air still, I just checked the moisture content in the slab today though and they can start installing the floor and moisture barriers, etc. in the bathroom and laundry rooms, then they will put up the roof for us. And I think that's more or less it for their part aside from electrics, we lay down the laminate floor, put up wallpaper, tiled floor in kitchen and so forth. Also all the cabinets and benches in the kitchen is our task. We went this option because it was a lot cheaper than having it made "key in hand" ready.

Translated the term for this is "5 minutes before completion"-ready. Also we build the terrace outside and paint the house and garage. I hope we can move in as soon as possible, maybe end of june or start of july, but it won't be ready then, just livable.

 

[DennisCA]

That looks great. I echo Natahan's post about seeing the way it's done elsewhere.

I'm interested in the metal roof - all that lovely insulation below, yet a heat conductor for a roof? That seems to defy logic, so I'd love to know the reason.

Thanks for sharing your project and I hope your son keeps well.

Greg

Missed this post last night, the roof being metal and conductive is honestly not something I've considered before, it's a common choice of roofing since it's cheap and light weight and easy to put up. There's usually an air gap between the roof and first layer of insulation as well so the outermost roof doesn't really have any insulative properties, that is done by the layers underneath the airgap.

We also don't use the upper attic, so it's empty and above our inner roof there's 500mm of insulation separating us from the larger airspace in the attic.

 

[DennisCA]

What we've been doing most recently is spackling and sanding the drywall, this is the bit we're doing ourselves:

Preliminary electricity wiring in the garage was also done recently:

And we got a fiber cable into the electricity central, we also have CAT-6 wire and ethernet ports in every room.

Just last week we got a shipment of laminate flooring boards:

Wall tile for the kitchen:

I made a saw horse and started cutting up the logs we got from felling the trees last year:

Got myself a Gränsfors splitting maul, it's real nice

Preliminary storage, gonna build a woodshed:

Leftover lumber I get to keep, some nice wide boards there that will become workbench surfaces and other things: