08 Field guide
Planning a care home energy project.
A practical sequence for owners, developers and estates teams: what to ask, what to gather and when to make the bigger decisions.
Start with the building and its people.
It is tempting to begin with a product: panels on the roof, a heat pump outside, charging spaces in the car park. A better first step is to understand the home, its demand, the people who run it and the constraints that could shape the design.
This guide is a planning aid, not a specification. The right technical and financial decisions need to be tested against your particular site.
Define the problem before the equipment.
Are you developing a new home, improving an existing one or considering a programme across several sites? The answer changes the starting point. For a live home, protecting routines and understanding existing services may be the first priority. For a new build, early plant space and supply decisions may be more urgent.
Ask stakeholders what success would look like in practical terms. A finance director may need clear assumptions behind a proposal. An estates manager may need maintenance access and usable controls. A registered manager may need confidence about comfort and disruption. These are different views of the same building.
Gather the evidence you already have.
You do not need a complete dataset to begin, but good information helps the first conversation move beyond generalities. Bring what is available and label what is estimated or out of date.
For an existing home
- Recent electricity and heating-fuel bills, ideally covering different seasons
- Any interval or half-hourly electricity data available
- Plans, roof information and known shading or access constraints
- Existing plant details, age, controls and maintenance concerns
- Occupancy, kitchen, laundry and hot-water use patterns
- Restrictions on access, shutdowns and resident-facing work
For a new development
- Current drawings, room schedule and expected occupancy
- Building fabric and early energy-design information
- Proposed kitchen, laundry and care equipment
- Known utility connection information
- Roof, plant, parking and external-space assumptions
- Programme milestones and the design team's responsibilities
For multi-site estates, a simple site-by-site inventory can reveal where information is missing and prevent a single building from being treated as representative of all the others.
Make choices in an order that leaves room to change.
- Understand demand and constraints.Establish how energy is used, what the building can accommodate and which services are critical to daily care.
- Consider the whole system.Look at heating, hot water, cooling, electrical capacity, generation and controls together. A decision in one area can change the requirements elsewhere.
- Test options against the site.Compare plausible approaches using stated assumptions, including access, maintenance and the operator's ability to use the system.
- Agree scope and responsibilities.Make clear who designs, supplies, installs, coordinates, tests and signs off each part of the work.
- Revisit assumptions at milestones.When occupancy plans, tariffs, layouts or utility information change, check the effect on the proposed solution.
Plan the work around the home, not only the programme.
In an occupied home, identify resident-sensitive spaces, visiting patterns, safe routes, noise considerations and any work that could affect essential services. Agree who communicates with staff and when. If temporary arrangements or shutdowns might be needed, they require a site-specific plan.
For new builds, involve the future operator before controls and room layouts are fixed. Ask who will adjust settings, receive alerts, organise servicing and keep records. Build time for demonstrations and handover into the programme so the estates team is not learning the building only after opening.
Turn the brief into a conversation.
Share the material you have, flag the gaps and ask for the next sensible step. That might be a closer look at an existing home's energy use, coordination with a new-build design team or a discussion about how a wider estate should be assessed site by site.
No single guide can confirm technical suitability, programme, savings or project outcomes. Those depend on the site and the final agreed scope.
Bring us the questions, not just the answers.
A useful project conversation can begin before every detail is known.