Vuokatti Sport
Chalets 2:
Charging safety in an accommodation property
When fire gases can end an athlete’s career, the answer could not be just an instruction to supervise charging.
Summary
Kiinteistö Oy Vuokatti Chalets 2, located next to the Vuokatti Sports Institute, serves active guests all year round. As e-bikes became more common, a question arose that instructions alone could not answer: how can batteries be charged safely when nobody is supervising the charging for hours on end?
Putting up a separate heated building was considered, but the costs would have run into tens of thousands of euros. The solution turned out to be a Latauspolku charging cabinet, which extinguishes a battery fire and prevents toxic fire gases from spreading. The safety of the guests was secured for a fraction of the price of the building option.
The customer
Kiinteistö Oy Vuokatti Chalets 2 offers accommodation in the immediate vicinity of the Vuokatti Sports Institute. Its guests are largely active people, many of them cyclists. Some are elite athletes, others are families on holiday. Finnish national-team level athletes train in Vuokatti, and following in their footsteps the youngest members of the family get their first taste of mountain biking, cross-country skiing, downhill skiing and much more.
1. The starting point
The growing popularity of e-bikes significantly increased the need to charge them on the property. Insurance companies require that charging be supervised, but an e-bike battery typically takes 3–7 hours to charge. Few holiday guests stay in their apartment continuously for that long, and nobody wants to spend their holiday watching a battery charge.
This was not only a practical arrangement. Knowing how serious the consequences of lithium battery fires are — especially the danger of the smoke and fire gases — made it necessary to solve charging safely outside the accommodation units.
2. Options considered
The first idea was to build a separate heated bike shed. The space would have had to be heated so that batteries could also be charged in winter temperatures. At the shareholders’ meeting the option prompted a great deal of discussion: as a whole, the solution would have been rather expensive, both to build and to maintain.
3. Why Latauspolku?
They heard about Latauspolku’s charging cabinet by chance. The spouse of the person responsible for the property had experience of the cabinet from their own workplace. The tip led to further research and to getting in touch with a Latauspolku representative.
That research confirmed the impression that Latauspolku’s charging cabinet is probably among the best on the market. One feature rose above all the others: in the event of a fire, the cabinet prevents fire gases from spreading.
Especially after reading how dangerous these fire gases are once they reach the lungs, preventing them from spreading became the number one issue. Some of our guests are elite athletes, for whom damage to the lungs means the end of a career.
The charging cabinet turned out to be considerably cheaper than putting up a new heated building. The cabinet was installed in the property’s ski waxing room. Installation was simple: no extra wiring, no water connection, no three-phase power. Fill the tank and plug it into the wall.
Guests can now leave an e-bike battery to charge safely, without anyone having to supervise the charging or worry about what happens if the battery catches fire.
The outcome
- Charging of e-bike batteries solved safely
- The risk of toxic fire gases spreading removed — the decisive factor for athlete guests
- Cost savings of tens of thousands of euros compared with building a separate heated building
- Installed with no renovation, no water connection and no three-phase power
