Heikki Junes

Fridges and passive houses

2008-02-15T11:14:00.013+02:00

How to spare energy when the price of energy continuously raises? When buying a fridge, I paid special attention to how a thicker thermal isolation layer reduces the energy consumption. A higher purchase price will be payed back in energy savings, storage time in power failure, and stillness.

Passive houses resemble fridges. In building them special attention has to be paid on the thermal isolation, heat recovery ventilation and quality. The house warms up by the sun, household appliances and people. A modest warming system protects in case of a really cold weather.

Building a passive house costs 5-10 % more, but will the investment pay back? Heat is released yearly 25 kWh/m², in an old house 150 kWh/m². For a 200 m² and 1000 €/m² house, the energy price of 8 c/kWh results in the payback period of less than 10 years.

Finnish summer is short, but there is not much snow!

2008-02-03T01:26:00.003+02:00

This is my childhood's home in June 1999. As you can see, summer has already arrived! The green birches in the backyard reflect the mentality in Lapland: they have a strong vitality even in the middle of snow!

For this kind of situation there is a neat proverb: "Finnish summer is short but fortunately there is not much snow!". And the same in Finnish language: "Suomen kesä on lyhyt mutta vähäluminen!".*

*For a help to the pronunciation of the Finnish language, you may want to know that the language follows pretty closely the International Phonetic Alphabet, see [æ] for ä.

Graduate studies

2008-02-02T23:57:00.001+02:00

I have been working as a graduate student at the Low Temperature Laboratory (LTL) at TKK since April 2004. The LTL is currently the home of 2 national Centers of Excellence (CoE): (1) Low Temperature Quantum Phenomena and Devices and (2) Systems Neuroscience and Neuroimaging Research.

Years 2005 and 2006 of my doctoral studies were financed by a foundation called Finnish Academy of Science and Letters, and since 2007 I have been financed by National Graduate School in Materials Physics which is funded by the Ministry of Education and the Academy of Finland.