The Villa Ainoa Ensto Hybrid House made news at the Finland Housing Fair in Hyvinkää last summer. But more importantly it meets the Hurme-Rintala family’s expectations for energy savings.

Villa Ainoa is a full 125 square meters of energy savings. It’s a one-story, resident-ready passive home manufactured by the prefabricated housing firm Ainoakoti using Ensto components: floor heating, a LED package, electricity distribution boards, a charging unit for an electric vehicle, as well as a ventilation unit with heat recovery.

Although many often associate ground-source heat with passive homes, the Villa Ainoa is a perfect argument against that technology. In calculations performed on a 137-square-meter home, total costs of ground-source heating were almost 12,000 euros higher over a 15-year period than those of a house like Villa Ainoa which employs electric floor heating and ventilation with heat recovery.

For lighting technology, Villa Ainoa uses Ensto LED luminaires to reduce the consumption of energy by at least 50 percent over conventional systems.

Villa Ainoa’s new homeowner Teea Hurme-Rintala says she’s just beginning to explore the flexibility the LED lighting offers. “In the kitchen we have many different lightning possibilities: direct for cooking and indirect for atmosphere and the aesthetic. It was absolutely great to have a lighting plan for Villa Ainoa.”

At the fair, Villa Ainoa took double honors for its energy efficiency, recognized by TTS (a Finnish research, development and training institute), and again by the Finnish magazine TM Rakennusmaailma.

Showcasing Energy-efficient Living

The Finland Housing Fair is an annual event to showcase ongoing and future trends in the housing industry – architecture, interior design, building, and energy efficiency.

The fair takes place on formerly empty ground, where new homes are constructed and decorated for home enthusiasts to visit. The houses are built for specific families, who will move in and occupy them when the fair closes.

The fair has taken place since 1970 and now attracts well over 100,000 visitors each year. In summer 2013, the fair was held in Hyvinkää. Next summer it will be in Jyväskylä.