How a Bristol care home group verified a 27% energy saving, then rolled it out to all six homes
Care homes heat around the clock, comfort is non-negotiable, and energy is now one of the biggest controllable costs a group carries. Here is how one Bristol group turned that problem into a verified 27% saving, and what any facilities manager can copy from the way they did it.
Start with one building, not a brochure
Ablecare Homes runs six care homes around Bristol. Like most operators, they had seen plenty of energy-saving pitches full of impressive percentages and short on evidence. So the project started the way every efficiency project should: with a single-site pilot at one home, Belvedere Lodge, and a simple rule that the meters would decide.
Agree the measurement before the installation
Before anything was fitted, the measurement method was agreed: the home's own meter readings, compared like-for-like against the pre-install baseline. Agreeing this up front matters more than most people realise. It removes the two classic escape hatches of the efficiency industry: the supplier who defines success after the fact, and the buyer who can never quite be sure what changed.
It also means weather can't flatter anyone. A mild winter will always cut a heating bill; a fair comparison adjusts for it.
Install without touching the operation
The V1 system wraps around closed-loop heating pipework. There was no cutting and no draining, no plant shutdown, and no disruption to residents or staff. For a care home this is not a nice-to-have. It is often the difference between a project being possible and not: taking heating or hot water offline in a building where people live simply isn't an option for most operators.
What the meters showed
The verified result at Belvedere Lodge was a 27% reduction in energy use, measured from the home's own meters against the agreed baseline. Not modelled, not projected from a manufacturer datasheet. Measured.
Then came the part that says more than any percentage: on the strength of that number, and only after it, Ablecare fitted the V1 system across all six of its homes. Nobody rolls a technology out group-wide as a favour. Rollouts happen when the finance director has seen the meter data.
Five things worth copying
Whatever supplier you are evaluating, including us, the Ablecare playbook travels well. Pilot one site before committing an estate. Agree the measurement method in writing before installation. Insist on meter readings, not projections. Prefer measures that don't interrupt operations, because the ones that do have a way of never reaching the top of the list. And make any rollout conditional on the verified result.
If a supplier hesitates at any of those five, you have learned something useful at zero cost.
See the numbers
The full story, including how the comparison was constructed, is in our Ablecare Homes case study. If you run a care home or a group and want to know what your own meters would say, book a free survey. A couple of plant room photos is usually enough to get started.