Our Journey to a Carbon Neutral Care Home in Gainsborough
“I was born just after the end of the second world war and I very clearly remember being brought up in a house without electricity, I must have witnessed the greatest advances in human development and to think what it would be like to go back 80 years is very difficult. Simple things like household refrigeration would have probably saved my brother’s life who succumbed to polio spread by fly eggs on human meat.”
– A Gainsborough resident associated with Grosvenor House
“I remember the first day we had electricity and for the first time easily controlled lighting, we had had a couple of near misses with paraffin lamps and small household fires, this was a big change in our lives.”
– A Gainsborough resident
“My husband worked on the building of West Burton Power Station, I was so proud of what he and many of hundreds of others achieved, it felt like the gap between wealth and poverty was narrowed as electricity became available to all.”
– A Grosvenor House resident
These are just some of the stories that our residents and community members share with us about how life used to be, and how hard it was for those before modern conveniences like heating and plumbing were commonplace. Advances in technology have changed the world for the better, but there’s still more we can do to make life better for the people in our care, our community, and the generations who will follow. That’s the thinking behind everything we’ve done at Grosvenor House.
20 years ago, Grosvenor House built an extension and used electric ground source heat pumps for our space heating. In fact, our rear garden is still full of collector pipes harvesting the heat from the garden and we even won an award for this from West Lindsey District Council. We have now fully committed to electricity with just a few gas bottles for back up.
Over 2021 and 2022 Grosvenor House witnessed a massive increase in electricity prices and even after they had settled, they were now doubled what they had been previously. Whilst we have always been aware of the need to be responsible about energy this combined with a world-wide push towards decarbonisation, we started to look at ways to be the best we could be regarding these matters.
Keeping our Care Home cool
In July 2022 Lincolnshire recorded the highest ever official temperature of 40.3°C in the UK, in fact during that heat wave the temperature inside many buildings was higher. We measured around 45°C!
Over the years the only thing that our staff had requested that we had not been able to solve was keeping the building cooler in summer. We had added building awnings, shades, glass films; we had so many fans but all they managed to do was push hot air around the building.
Also, our residents committee asked us to look at some means of giving relief during these bouts of hot weather, maybe looking at cool zones, as a suggestion. So we commissioned a report from an expert to look at all our alternatives. It then became apparent there were some fantastic, relatively new systems available – namely an air-to-air air source heat pump system with energy recovery – which could be used in conjunction with solar energy.
Energy recovery
So what does the recovery bit mean? When we need to cool parts of the building and each client decides on their own temperature which can vary throughout the day, it’s all personalised. The system gathers the surplus thermal energy which we commonly call heat, it concentrates the energy and it can move it around the building to an area that requires heat.
This was a huge investment for Grosvenor House but the ability to give everybody a personalised temperature setting in their own room and cooling for communal rooms seemed a perfect solution. Not only that we could potentially reduce our CO2 output and energy consumption by 50%. This looked to be the perfect solution for our resident, our staff, our sustainability both financially and environmentally.
50 by 40” 50% reduction of CO2 by forty years old. The project should be complete by July 2026 and GH and Project 50 by 40” 50% reduction of CO2 by forty years old.
So by 2025 Grosvenor House had installed a Mitsubishi air to air heat pump system with Heat Recovery and smart controls for space heating/cooling and hot water, along with 178 solar panels giving more than 80kW peak performance combined with Octopus’s smart green energy Grosvenor House is getting close to being a zero-carbon building and home. In summer we are regularly exporting surplus green energy back to the grid.
Water supply
Care Homes use lots of hot water, we use about 3000 litres a day, this surplus heat can be pushed straight into our hot water tanks, so we are effectively getting near carbon free hot water when this happens.
Rooms like the laundry can regularly get too warm because of all the hot water being used, and again the system collects that surplus space heat and pushes it back into the hot water system. Genius ! 😊
Our eco project work
“People, Planet, Profit” represents the Triple Bottom Line (TBL), a framework that encourages us to measure our success not just by our ability to pay our bills, but also by our positive social and environmental impact.
All of our “project 50 by 40” work has been carried out without any government grants, incentives, or feed-in tariffs. Our project does not put a single penny into other people’s energy bills; it is initiated and completed with our assets, financed by our vision of a collective, worthy future.
We use this model to drive our innovation, build a long-term connection with our neighbourhood, and future-proof our operations against regulatory and climate risks. What we do and have done for over 40 years, without a single second of downtime, is live for today and make a generational offer to all, as we have a very clear vision for all our futures.
We kept it local
A Gainsborough Client
A Gainsborough Heat Pump Contractor
A Gainsborough Builder
All Gainsborough Labour
A Gainsborough Wholesale Suppliers
A Lincolnshire Solar Panel Installer/ Designer
UK made Heat Pump Components and Units
Delighted local clients/staff /Visitors
If you would like to come and take a look at the systems Grosvenor House has in place to become a greener care home, contact us today to arrange a visit!
