OREANDA-NEWS. On 20 February 2009 was announced, that 1,660 apartment buildings with the total area of 11.6 million square metres underwent an overhaul in Moscow last year, Artur Keskinov, head of Moscow’s Department for Housing Overhaul, said on February 19.

According to the official, within that time frame the stairway enclosures and cellars of the dwelling houses were freed from gas pipelines, 24,000 old gas cookers were replaced by new ones, 1,505 lifts were substituted and 1,910 were updated.

The blocks of flats were overhauled by applying the up-to-date energy-efficient technologies, materials and equipment. More than 2,200 kilometres of the cold and hot water supply pipes were substituted by the polypropylene ones, over 100 automated governor assemblies for a heating system was installed in 2008.

“In total, 43.6 billion roubles (~\\$1.2 billion) allocated from Moscow’s budget funds were spent for the implementation of the program in 2008,” Mr Keskinov noted.

The official added that the amount of work done by Moscow’s Department for Housing Overhaul the year before was comparable to the same indexes in the other regions of Russia.

“The Moscow Mayor issued the 2009 challenge to provide the conditions for getting small businesses involved in the overhaul works, roughly 30 per cent of such works should be done by them,” Mr Keskinov said.

According to him, the mayor wants to have the residential buildings overhauled completely.

The head of Moscow’s Department for Housing Overhaul emphasized that the work aimed at increasing the power consumption efficiency of the blocks of flats would be continued in 2009 as well as the heat insulation of such structures and the update of the heating systems by installing the automated governor assemblies. The total reduction in the power consumption of the residential buildings is estimated to be from 27 up to 50 per cent.