House Arkko Fact Sheet

The house is designed for our family. It is located in Kauniainen, on a lot of about 950 m2, close to another house of similar (but not same) design. The lot is about 300 m from schools, 400 m from shops, and 500 m from the town center and railway station; train to the city of Helsinki takes a bit over 15 minutes from there. The community swimming pool is about 1 km away, lake is 500 m away, and the ski hill is 2 kms away.

The house has two main floors plus a full-size basement and a cold attic for storage. The warm parts of the house are roughly 480 m2; in addition there are about 120 m2 of various non-heated storage rooms, terraces, and balconies.

There are four main bedrooms, one study room, and one spare bedroom in the basement with small windows. In addition there is a kitchen, a living room with an adjoining dining room, a media room, four washrooms/toilets, a sauna, jacuzzi room, eight storage rooms, two maintenance rooms, a garage, a terrace, and a balcony.

Clearing the site started September 2002 and the hole in the ground for the basement was created in December 2002 -- the latter involved removing some 120 truck loads of rocks that were left as a result of detonating ground rock that is very near the surface on the lot.

Construction started for real in August 2003, when the basement floor was constructed. Between March and May 2004, the main floors and the attic were constructed. Since then, operations have been going on inside to make the wall, ceiling, and floor materials, to mount all technology systems and so on. We moved to the house in July 2005, though it took two more years for the house to be official completed. And there is still some unfinished details, the garden is not complete, and so on.

Most of the work has been done by contractors, but I've done quite a bit myself too. And I have friendly relatives who help!

A number of hi-tech and design features have been built in. These include:

Here are the basic plans for the basement, 1st floor, and 2nd floor.


Created April 9th, 2004.
Last modified October 12, 2009 by Jari Arkko

There have been visitors since December 7, 2004.