Energy Saving

Even though electricity and almoast all housing locations also water are included in the rent in TYS apartments, it’s good to keep in mind that energy consumption has an impact on the availability of energy, the environment as well, and also creates costs for TYS. Saving energy is important for curbing climate change, securing access to energy, reducing the need to import energy, lowering energy costs and protecting the environment.

Everyone should also be prepared for intermittent energy shortages. Shortages might be caused by long freezing periods with no wind, low supply of Nordic hydropower electricity, power plant outages or maintenance outages and high electricity demand in Central Europe. Electricity shortages might lead to distribution outages. The risk of outages can be reduced by paying close attention to your electricity consumption habits and times.

Reducing water consumption is important to save the environment. In TYS apartments, the water is heated depending on the housing locations with district or geothermal heating. Reducing water consumption not only saves the water itself, but also the energy used for its cleaning, heating, transportation and post-treatment of wastewater.

Every TYS tenant can save energy! Start thinking about your energy consumption and take advantage of our easy, everyday electricity and water saving tips below. Small everyday actions can make a big difference!

If you reserve a sauna shift, please remember to use it, as heating the sauna uses a lot of electricity. The energy spent heating the sauna for an unused shift is wasted.

The energy spent heating the sauna for an unused shift is wasted. One one-hour sauna shift consumes approximately 13 kWh. The amount may seem small, but in two weeks during TYS’ sauna shifts, heating the saunas already uses electricity equivalent to the yearly electricity consumption of one single-family house!

 You can cancel your sauna shift 2 hours prior, and it will become available for other eager sauna-goers

TYS apartments are heated by radiators, and heating the hot water that flows through them requires energy. At TYS, apartment temperatures are adjusted by an automatic system, which regulates the amount of water circulating through the radiators according to the outside temperature, so that when the thermostat is set to ”maximum”,  it aims to keep the temperature at +19-21 degrees. You can set your apartment temperature to cooler than this, but not warmer. By lowering the apartment temperature by one degree you can save five percent on heating energy.

For heating, it is crucial that energy is utilized as efficiently as possible. You should observe the following:

• Take care that there are no curtains or large furniture in front of the radiator or thermostat – this can prevent the thermostat from detecting the correct temperature as well as obstruct the heat from radiating into the room.
• If the windows in your apartment have trickle vents, remember to adjust them accordingly when it is summer or winter. When correctly adjusted, no heating energy is wasted. NOTE! Never block the vent, because that would interfere with ventilation!

If you suspect your apartment is cooler than the target temperature, you can pick up a thermometer at the housing office and check if the temperature is consistently below the recommendation (19 °C- 22 °C) by measuring at a height of 1,1 meters, at least 0,6 meters from the wall. If the temperature is below the recommendation, fill in a fault report on the Tenant Pages.

During the warm months, when the sun shines and heats both apartments and buildings, your apartment has naturally been warmer than in the cold seasons. Depending on the season, we add warm layers to our clothing when going outside and also at home. As the weather gets colder it’s time to break out the wool sweaters, coats and socks. On dusky nights it’s nice to curl up on the couch with a blanket and a warm cup of tea.

Using a extra devices to heat your apartment is not recommended, as it uses electricity and can also interfere with the heating system. The apartment heating system will detect that it is warmer than the target temperature and will turn off the heating completely.

Turning off an unnecessary light when leaving a room or your apartment you can save energy. For example, every hour a light bulb uses about 0,06 kWh and in six hours it uses approximately 0.36 kWh. This may not seem like a lot, but if every TYS tenant turns off one extra light for six hours every day, in nine days the electricity consumption of one detached house can be saved! If you include other lights as well, these savings can be further increased.

You should also look at the bulbs you use in your lighting. LED lamps are the most energy efficient. So, if you still have light bulbs in your lighting, you should replace them with LED or energy-saving lamps, because they consume six times more energy than LED lamps.

By defrosting the freezer you can help it function more efficiently. Frost buildup can cause your freezer to use up to 25 % more electricity. By defrosting it you also get plenty more space!

By defrosting the freezer, an individual TYS tenant can save approx. 110 kWh of electricity during the year. The amount may seem small, but if 2,000 of the approximately 7,000 TYS tenants keep their freezers free of excess ice, energy equal to the annual electricity consumption of 10 electrically heated single-family houses can be saved!

You can find simple instructions for defrosting the freezer on this video from our ”On the road with TYS staff” series:

By turning off devices you’re not using at home, you can save surprisingly much. For example every hour a laptop uses about 0,03 kWh. If left on all the time, it uses 262,08 kWh per year. This may not seem like a lot, but if every TYS tenant shuts down their laptop for just 12 hours a day, it would save the electricity consumption of about 42 detached houses over the course of a year! If you include other devices as well, these savings can be further increased.

Did you know that a cell phone charger constantly draws energy from the outlet when plugged in? It’s a good idea to always unplug it when it’s not in use.

If the charger is on the outlet for the whole year, without the phone being charged, electricity is consumed around 0.25 kWh. The amount may seem small, but if all TYS tenants unplug the charger from the outlet when they are not using it, an amount of electricity can be saved in a year, which corresponds to ten percent of the annual electricity consumption of one electrically heated single-family house! If you also include computer chargers, you save even more electricity!

By drying your laundry on the rack instead of using the dryer you can save electricity.

Electricity consumption rises every morning when people start their day, and a new peak in electricity consumption occurs in the afternoon and early evening when people return home from the day’s chores. Avoiding these biggest consumption peaks and shifting the use of electricity use away from times of peak demand, i.e. consumption flexibility, is important in order to secure electricity sufficiency and reduce the possibility of power outages.

On weekdays, consumption is high, especially in the morning between 8 and 10 a.m., between 4 and 5 p.m. in the afternoon and between 6:30 p.m. and 8 p.m. in the evening. Try to balance your electricity use. Turn on and use high-powered appliances after times of peak demand.

The biggest household water glutton is the shower, which uses a lot of water and heating energy. By limiting your weekly number of showers you can save tens or even hundreds of litres per week, as just one minute in the shower uses about 12 litres of water. By switching from a daily 10 minute shower, which uses about 120 litres of water, to a 5 minute shower will save 60 litres of water per shower.

By taking shorter showers, in addition to water, you can save heating energy at the same time. If every TYS tenant saves 60 liters of hot water during the day, for example in the shower, in less than two days the energy equivalent to the annual electricity consumption of one detached house can be saved!

Also, remember to turn off the shower while you soap up!

If you want to start keeping track of the time you spend in the shower, you can pick up your own 5 minute showering hourglass at the TYS housing office. Can you finish your shower in 5 minutes?

Few of us like cold showers. The shower is not only the biggest water user in households, but it also consumes a lot ofheating energy.

By taking slightly cooler showers instead of blazing hot ones, you can adjust lower the amount of heating energy used for the shower. If every TYS tenant saves 60 liters of hot water during the day i.e. shortens the time they spent in the shower by 5 minutes, in less than two days the energy equivalent to the annual electricity consumption of one electrically heated detached house can be saved!

By keeping an eye on the condition of your plumbing fixtures, such as the toilet and faucets, and reporting any possible leaks to TYS, you can save huge amounts of water. A leaky toilet tank can waste several litres of water per hour, which can total even 30 000 litres, or 3 000 buckets of water per week!

So, if you have a dripping faucet for example, fill in a fault report on the Tenant Pages and we can fix the leak and prevent water from being wasted.

In addition to showering, it’s good to keep an eye on your bathroom water consumption in general. Turning off the tap while brushing your teeth is a good idea. Leaving the water running for 2 minutes while you brush totals about 12 litres of water down the drain per brushing. If every resident of TYS saves 12 liters of water during the day, for example when brushing their teeth, 78,000 liters of water can be saved in one day!

If you wash the laundry or dishes by hand, it’s important not to wash them under running water. If you let the water run you use about 12 litres of water per minute. That’s 60 litres in 5 minutes.

If every TYS tenant saves 60 liters of water during the day, for example when washing clothes or dishes, 390,000 liters of water can be saved in one day!

Psst! If you don’t have your own washing machine at home, the most energy-efficient way to do laundry is to use the laundry room of your own housing location. You can find instructions for using the laundry and additional information on purchasing laundry credits on the TYS website at https://tys.fi/en/services/laundry-room-shifts

The most energy-efficient way to wash clothes or dishes is to use a washing machine intended for them. Wash full machine loads and use quick and economy programs whenever possible.

If you don’t have a washing machine at home, it´s good idea to wash your clothes in the laudry instead of by hand. You can find the location of your apartment’s laundry and the reservation calendar on your tenant page. Through your tenant pages, you can also buy credits for using the laundry.

Washing by hand uses considerably more water that using a washing machine. When washing by hand a single load of laundry can use even 120 litres of water, where a machine only uses 60. That’s a save of 60 litres.

With the water meter you can see in real time how much water you have used, for example, showering. Some TYS housing locations (Aitiopaikka, Haliskylä, Yo-talo A, Tyyssija and the Kuunsilta renovated apartments) have apartment specific water meters that measure the amounts of used cold and hot water. With the meter, the tenant can observe their own water consumption and, if necessary, make changes in their consumption habits and can track their water saving goals. Can you lower your monthly water consumption by, for example, taking shorter showers?

If you air out your apartment, it should be done effectively, but not for a long time. A good duration to air out the apartment is, for example, a few minutes with a cross-draught.

Therefore, open several windows around the apartment at the same time to create a cross-draught and close all windows after about 2-3 minutes. The best times for airing out the apartment are in the morning after waking up and in the evening just before going to bed. Don’t forget to close the windows, because then keeping them open wastes heating energy.

By doing the airing out efficient, the air in your apartment changes, but the structures of the house do not cool down and thus the heating energy is not wasted. Effective airing out of 2-3 minutes saves heating energy by about 98 percent compared to keeping the window open, for example, eight hours of in an 18 m2 studio apartment.

How does a movie night or a game night with friends sound? Pretty fun, right? You can even save electricity at the same time!

By having, for example, a six person movie night, you save 5 televisions’ energy consumption for one night. For example, a 32″ to 37″ LCD TV consumes 0.08–0.19 kWh per hour. Which for 6 hours of viewing is 0.48-1.14 kWh. If once a week six people get together to watch one television, 2.4–5.7 kWh is saved per week. If movie night is held every week, savings will already be 124.8–296.4 kWh per year.

A get together also means good food, and you can cook for everyone with just one oven instead of six. For example, using the oven for an hour consumes about 2 kWh per hour. If the same group gets together and cooks with one oven instead of six, 10 kWh is saved per dinner. In a year, it is already 520 kWh.

The amounts may seem small, but if one third of the approximately 7,000 TYS tenants have a get together for six people once a week, in just four weeks, energy equal to the annual electricity consumption of one electrically heated single-family house can be saved!