Public wooden construction has not progressed according to the national goals, because the municipalities do not have enough know-how to implement large wooden projects. In addition, the reason is the increase in construction costs.
The rental housing company Lahten Talot, owned by the city of Lahti, only now dared to build its first wooden apartment building, although the company has been operating in the rental housing market for a long time.
– Yes, the culture of wooden apartment building construction in Finland is still relatively thin, if you don’t take into account the construction of single-family houses or townhouses. There has been very little construction of wooden apartment buildings.
Lahten Talot is the largest landlord in the region with more than 7,000 rental apartments. In Lahti, which was chosen as Finland’s environmental capital, the city’s rental housing company wanted to play its part in achieving a more carbon-neutral future.
Next to the new wooden apartment building, two new wooden apartment buildings will be built by Lahti Taloj on the former site of the Nelo bakery on Svinhufvudinkatu. One of these will probably start to be built next spring.
The plot zoned for three apartment buildings is located in a great location near the shore of Vesijärvi and near the teaching facilities of the Education Center Salpaus.
More time for planning
– In a wooden house, the planning time is a little longer and the construction time correspondingly shorter.
The Lahti Taloj wooden apartment building has been realized from large elements already built at the JVR-Rakente factory. The entire apartment module is built and furnished in the factory. In this case, tiling, painting, listings, toilet furniture and kitchen furniture up to the refrigerator and oven are in place.
A wooden apartment building is an apartment building whose supporting frame structures are mainly made of wood.
Jukka Anttonen estimates that building a wooden apartment building costs 10-20 percent more than a concrete apartment building. He does not want to give an exact price for the 55-apartment building that has now been completed, but says that the construction of the house cost 5-10 million euros.
Behind the national wood construction goals
In autumn 2020, the Ministry of the Environment has drawn up the national goals for public wooden construction for the years 2022-2025. Emissions can be reduced by using wood in construction. A third of greenhouse emissions are generated in the construction sector.
During the reign of Sanna Marini, the goal has been to double the use of wood in public construction. For example, the goal of wood construction in all new public construction is 31 percent this year and already 45 percent in 2025.
– In public construction, the share of wood has been around 16 percent, and for the first quarter of this year, 18 percent. We are clearly behind the goal setting.
According to Heino, a lot has been due to the fact that the public sector has not been able to be motivated to wood construction as was thought. There is also a lack of know-how.
– The municipalities do not have sufficient know-how to implement large tree projects. The sizes of schools and the apartment building operations of municipal rental housing companies are growing all the time. And wood is not such a familiar material, so it’s easy to slip into other materials.
The sharp increase in construction costs could also have contributed to falling short of the targets. Along with steel, the price of wood has risen the most among building materials, according to Forecon’s statistics.
More drastic measures have been introduced in France at the beginning of this year. There, half of all public construction must be wood construction. This includes, for example, municipal construction contracts.