Air Conditioning for Care Homes
Planned maintenance, repairs and new cooling for residential and nursing homes across Bromley, Orpington, Sevenoaks and South East London — from an engineer who has run maintenance in a care home himself.
Care Home Pricing
- £120 first complete system, £90 each additional
- £195 per system/year, twice-yearly
- New customers: first visit £99 / £75
- Written report per system, with photos
- No VAT to add
Qualified, registered and insured
REFCOM registeredCertificate REF1026174
City & GuildsLevel 2 plumbing
LCL AwardsF-gas and ASHP Level 3
CIPHE memberChartered institute- F-gas certifiedRefrigerant handling
- ASHP Level 3Air source heat pumps
- G3 unventedHot water cylinders
- WRAS Water RegulationsQualified installer
- £2m insuredPublic liability
Why Cooling Matters in a Care Home
Older residents are among the people most at risk in hot weather. Heat-health guidance for care homes asks managers to keep certain rooms or areas below 26°C, so residents have somewhere to cool down, and to monitor indoor temperatures, especially where people spend most of their time.
That puts the air conditioning in your lounge, dining room or cool room on the welfare side of the ledger, not the comfort side. A unit that fails in the first hot week of July is a resident safety problem — and the time to find out it's struggling is April, not July.
Medication rooms matter too. Most medicines are stored at room temperature, and their packs give limits such as below 25°C or below 30°C. A treatment room that overheats every summer puts stock at risk.
Rooms and Systems in a Care Home
Cool rooms and lounges
Serviced before summer so they deliver full output in the first heatwave, with a second visit after the season if you're on a twice-yearly agreement.
Medication and treatment rooms
Small rooms, closed doors and fridges giving off heat. Often the hottest room in the building, and the one where temperature records matter most.
Offices, server cupboards and nurse stations
Care planning, medication and call systems run on IT that doesn't like heat.
Residents' rooms
Individual wall units in bedrooms need quiet operation, clean filters and drains that don't drip. Visits are planned around residents, not the other way round.
Cassettes, ducted units and drain pumps
Ceiling units lift condensate with a drain pump, and when one fails the water has only one way to go. Pumps and float switches are tested on every visit.
Working in an Occupied Home
- Visits planned around mealtimes, medication rounds and residents’ routines — early mornings, evenings or weekends at no extra cost.
- A risk assessment and method statement on request before work starts, and I sign in and out like any visitor.
- Rooms protected with dust sheets, filters washed away from residents, and work areas left clean.
- Quiet working, and a word with the person in charge before I go into any resident's room.
Before going full-time with Smith EcoFlow I ran planned maintenance in a care home, including its Mitsubishi Electric City Multi VRF and Mr Slim air conditioning. I know what a compliance folder needs, because I kept one.
Records for Your Compliance Folder
Regulation 15 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014 requires premises and equipment to be clean, suitable and properly maintained. For air conditioning, the evidence is a dated service record for each system — and that's what you get from me after every visit, with photographs.
Two other duties are worth knowing about. Systems holding enough refrigerant — 5 tonnes CO₂ equivalent or more — must be leak-checked at least every 12 months, and more often for larger systems; I'll tell you which of yours are in scope and keep the records. And where the air conditioning in a building adds up to more than 12kW, a TM44 energy inspection is needed at least every five years. That has to be done by an accredited energy assessor — I don't carry out TM44 inspections, but I'll tell you if your site is likely to need one.
| Refrigerant | GWP | Yearly checks from | 6-monthly from |
|---|---|---|---|
| R410A | 2,088 | 2.40 kg | 23.95 kg |
| R407C | 1,774 | 2.82 kg | 28.19 kg |
| R134a | 1,430 | 3.50 kg | 34.97 kg |
| R32 | 675 | 7.41 kg | 74.07 kg |
Read this diagram as text
Care Home Pricing
£120 for the first complete system and £90 for each additional system on the same visit. A complete system means one indoor unit and its matched outdoor unit. On a twice-yearly agreement it is £195 per system per year.
If we haven't worked together before, your first visit is £99 for the first standard single-split system and £75 for each additional one. VRF, multi-split and difficult-access systems are surveyed and quoted separately.
Care homes generally can't reclaim VAT on maintenance. I'm not VAT-registered, so there's no VAT on my invoices — the price I quote is the price you pay.
New cooling for a lounge or cool room: single-split systems from £1,700 fitted, with larger rooms and multi-room systems surveyed and quoted.
Care Home Air Conditioning Questions
Book a Care Home Survey
A free look at your systems and your records, and a fixed price for keeping them right.
07717 846247
Healthcare and Commercial Air Conditioning
Sector guides, contracts and the systems I know best.