Running a care home for elderly requires a lot of electricity and gas to provide comfort level to those who stay at care home. Read this brief guide to see how you can save on energy costs and reduce your operational costs.
Care home residents are generally older or those who need special care that can be provided in their homes. Due to their age and physical conditions, they tend to feel cold and the temperature of these facilities tend to be kept quite high. These facilities run on 24-hour basis; their energy bills tend to be higher than other businesses.
As the older population in the UK is on the rise, so demand for building more care homes is growing. Care home managers see an increased pressure to look after not only the safety and well-being of their residents, but also to keep an eye on increasing energy costs.
"In total the UK’s healthcare sector spends more than £400 million per year on energy. Unfortunately, a significant proportion of this is wasted, meaning that money is being wasted too." - Carbon Trus
Care homes can take certain steps to reduce their energy costs as shown below.
To conduct an energy audit, you can either hire a professional energy auditor or you can take simple steps to carry out an energy audit yourself. Walk around the building and take notes of what you see – are lights turned off in empty rooms? Is heating set to low or is turned off in empty waiting or common areas? Check your toilets to see if there are any water leakages.
After you have taken notes of these, you can begin to plan on making changes that will gradually reduce your energy consumption and thus reducing energy cost.
In the UK, heating is responsible for around 70% of the energy bills in care homes. By taking appropriate actions to implement energy efficiency in heating systems or boiler, care homes can significantly reduce their energy cost.
Regular maintenance of your boiler system, installing low H2O radiators and not using electric heaters in common areas can dramatically decrease energy usage.
With high heat demand in care homes, it is utmost important to have good insulation to prevent heat from escaping the building. You can insulate your roof, walls and entry/exit points to reduce the heat escape. Check all doors and windows to make sure there are no gaps that need to cover to trap the heat inside.
Use LED lights that use small amount of energy to operate. Like the hotel rooms, you can install either smart card or motion sensors that will detect if a resident is not in the room and the system will turn off lights to save energy.
As the prices of installing renewable energy system are on the decline, make use of it. Get renewable energy sources installed at your care homes. Solar power, solar water heaters and various other technologies are available in the market and they can be part funded by various green initiatives offered by the government.
If you would like to know more about how to reduce energy at your care home, call 0345 021 5000 and one of our trained energy consultant will walk you through different options on reducing your energy costs.
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