Category: HMO’s

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Comet Homes Alpesh Kavia

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ALPESH KAVIA - COMET HOMES​​

HMOs are always a tricky situation when it comes to energy bills. Tenants prefer the simplicity of an “all included” price, but then they don’t have any incentive to manage the heating carefully. Landlords are put in the difficult position of needing to keep tenants happy while also keeping heating costs under control.

A side-by-side comparison

We spoke to Alpesh Kavia from Comet Homes about an interesting installation he’d done in West Ruislip, North-West London. Although fairly typical in many regards, what makes this property interesting is that there are three similar apartments next to each other.

All are HMOs with ensuite bathrooms for each bedroom, newly built above a shop in a terraced style. In the name of science, the landlord decided to test three different configurations:

  • One “baseline” apartment with just the standard 7 day timer and manual TRVs on each radiator
  • An apartment with a “basic zoned” Genius Hub system: valve heads on the bedroom radiators only
  • One apartment with the “full works”: motion sensors in each room, valves on all radiators including on the towel radiators in each ensuite bathroom

How did this installation go?

“The installation went smoothly”, Alpesh tells us. “One aspect that could have cause an issue with other heating controls is that in some of the bedrooms, access to the radiator valve was blocked by the bed – so tenants wouldn’t be able to reach the valve to adjust the room temperature. That’s no problem with Genius Hub though, because I just installed wireless thermostats on the wall, so tenants can use that instead.”

Significant savings

These apartments are newly built to modern building standards, including insulation, double glazing and efficient A-rated gas boilers. As such, potential savings are lower than for older properties that lose a lot more heat. With this in mind, did the Genius Hub controls actually save any money?

Based on the first year’s gas consumption, the answer is a resounding ‘yes’! Compared to the “baseline” apartment, the “basic zoned” install achieved energy savings of over 7%. This is an underestimate, though, as this apartment has 6 bedrooms while the others have only 5 bedrooms. Despite the current price gap on gas, this still represents savings of over £170 per year.

The apartment with the “full works” doubled these savings, cutting gas consumption by over 15%. At current gas prices, that’s a saving of over £370 per year. And, of course, if gas prices rise, savings will increase, making Genius Hub a useful protection against future price increases.

Why choose Genius Hub?

“About 2 years ago, I developed my own HMO. I wanted heating controls that allow me to manage the heating but also allow the tenants some flexibility, within limits. I looked at Tado, Inspire and Hive but there wasn’t anything else that really met my needs. I chose Genius Hub because it allows tenants to control only the room, without overheating the whole house. Also, the other systems don’t allow you to control the hot water temperature.”

What do tenants make of Genius Hub?

“What I’ve learned is that if you can install Genius Hub before new tenants move in, it’s the perfect time. They just accept that it’s part of their new home, and that’s how it works.

If you install the system with tenants already in the property, expect to have to help them to adjust to not just having 24/7 heating like they’re used to. You have to help them understand what the system is and how it works; also that the sensors only detect movement, it’s not a camera! I made short videos to send them on WhatsApp, and stickers with instructions. After 3-4 weeks they were familiar with the system and didn’t have any more difficulties.”

How’s the experience as a landlord?

Landlords clearly benefit from the energy savings. But are there any other benefits to having a Genius Hub system installed in your HMO?

“It’s really useful to be able to diagnose some common problems remotely, without having to visit the property. I always install Genius Hub with a temperature probe. Normally if nothing’s getting heat, it’s because the boiler pressure has dropped too low. If only some rooms are getting heat, it’s because there’s air in the system. Sometimes tenants can resolve these common issues without needing to call a plumber.

Also the, MegaFlow tank has an electric immersion heater in it, so I can use the Genius Hub app to remotely switch that on if there’s any problem with the boiler. That way, the tenants are comfortable and I can schedule a plumber in the next few days, without needing to pay for an emergency call-out, or I can go resolve the issue myself when I have time.

In general, it’s just great to be able to monitor and control the heating remotely. That way, I can conveniently address any issues and keep my tenants happy, while also keeping energy costs under control.”

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Student Cribs

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©Student Cribs

STUDENT CRIBS

CASE STUDY

HMO landlords like Student Cribs face a dilemma when it comes to energy bills. Tenants love the convenience and peace of mind of paying rent with their bills included, but then they have no incentive not to waste energy. We interviewed Student Cribs to find out if Genius Hub helped them to keep energy costs under control while keeping their tenants happy.

The story of Student Cribs

In 2003, frustrated by being rejected by landlords just because he was a student, Charlie Vaughan-Lee started Student Cribs. Initially he bought and renovated three properties, which he let to friends. Now, two decades later, Student Cribs manages over 5000 rooms in around 1000 properties across the country.

They pride themselves on providing comfortable, well-equipped student houses in the best locations in university cities and towns. Tenants pay a simple, all-inclusive price, including electricity, heating, hot water and other utilities.

The challenges of managing heating at scale

HMO properties are notorious for being wasteful with energy, with tenants in bills-included properties often turning up the central heating thermostat when they’re cold, but opening windows when it’s too hot! Meanwhile, landlords typically have little ability to manage energy consumption in their properties.

Student Cribs has been tackling this challenge using smart heating controls, allowing their team to monitor heating settings remotely and ensure that heating is reduced to the frost setting when students leave during holiday periods.

Tom Ferber (Director) “We want to save energy, but it’s almost really important that our tenants are comfortable and that the heating system is easy for them to control. The risks of trying a new control system are small because these are small properties, but the potential energy saving is huge.”

Previously they have used another smart thermostat system, but it didn’t support the control of electric heating, which they needed for their properties in Swansea. That’s when they looked around for alternatives and discovered Genius Hub.

Why did they choose Genius Hub?

Their Swansea properties use electric convection heaters, which are expensive to run – but replacing them with a new heating system would be a major investment. Instead, they turned to Genius Hub to control each individual heater, as well as the immersion heater for hot water.

Tom: “The price was excellent, and our experience of the Genius Hub team is that they’re engaged and helpful. We were a bit concerned about needing to replace batteries frequently, as we’d had that problem with another heating control system. And of course, we never know whether the energy savings will be as much as predicted.”

Typically in a HMO with electric heating, a Genius Hub can pay for itself in well under 2 years; sometimes in less than a year. To put that to the test, Student Cribs installed Genius Hub into eight terraced properties in Swansea. This Genius Hub installation uses motion sensors to detect when tenants are home, turning off each room’s electric heater automatically when they leave. 

©Student Cribs
©Student Cribs

When the property is completely vacated, it even turns off the immersion heater in the hot water tank, helping save even more energy during holiday periods. As soon as the first tenant returns, the hot water automatically turns back on.

Even though they could use their existing heating control solution with properties that use gas boilers, Student Cribs were curious to see how Genius Hub compares. So they chose to also install our full, motion-sensing heating controls in four of their properties in Exeter, using wireless valve heads to control each room’s radiators individually.

Currently, installing individual room control normally leads to a longer payback period than installing a simpler, cheaper Genius Hub system that only provides whole house control. However, installing the “full package” can bring greater energy savings over the long term, and helps insulate Student Cribs from any future gas price increases. Also, because each Genius Room Sensor also measures temperature, it allows them to avoid excessive electricity bills by easily identifying when tenants are using electric heaters.

What’s it been like to use Genius Hub?

Tom continues; “The installation was easy; the contractors installed it as part of the renovation they were doing on the properties. The controls for Genius Hub are easy to use, and itand it integrates easily with how the tenants use the buildings. It doesn’t have many points of failure; generally, we’ve found that once it’s up and running, you can just leave it alone. That works well for our type of tenants. We like that Genius Hub automatically takes care of everything, so we’re not heating empty rooms; we’re saving energy.”

Although it’s mainly a ‘fit and forget’ solution, landlords like Student Cribs can still easily monitor heating settings across multiple properties in one place: our ‘Multi-Hub Dashboard’.

“If a tenant does have an issue with their heating, it’s great to be able to immediately log into Genius Hub and solve it remotely. And we can easily see whether they’re using electric heaters. As soon as the staff at head office saw what Genius Hub could do, they all thought that it’s great and wondered why we’re not using it in all our other properties!”

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Real Property UK

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REAL PROPERTY UK

CASE STUDY

DARLINGTON

Real Property UK own and manage more than 30 HMOs (Houses of Multiple Occupancy) in the thriving town of Darlington, county Durham. Owner of the business Paul Million was very concerned about the amount of heat and therefore money that was being wasted in the Winter from his properties, often left all day with the heating on, the windows open and no one at home.

Paul needed something to keep his tenants happy and his bills down so he installed 28 Genius Hubs into all of the properties that could benefit from zoned heating control, taking advantage of the Genius Hub Smart heating system and occupancy detection to turn down the heating in rooms when they are not being used.

Rolling the system out was only done after a careful and thorough test of the system was completed. Paul installed the first Genius Hub one whole year before, and he installed it into the property occupied by Paul Stevens, head of maintenance. If there were going to be any problems with the system then Paul Stevens would be the one to decide whether or not this was a good product to roll out across the estate.

One year on and all of the properties now have Genius Hubs and management of the systems has been passed onto the owner’s right hand lady; Carla. Here is Carla’s account of the day to day management of the system.

How did you hear about Genius Hub?
Through an installer we had, he was really helpful and very knowledgeable about the system.We also used him to install the system into the rest of the properties as part of the main roll out of the system. One of the engineers from Genius Hub’s head office in Birmingham came to visit three to four of the properties with us to check that we were specifying the right kit and then it was down to us to fit it with their help on the phone if we needed it.

Why smart heating controls?
Saving money is important, and keeping the tenants happy of course. It is a competitive market and we want to provide value for money for our tenants. We also know that managing the household bills is difficult for them, especially when they share the house with others who may only be there for a number of months. So we take care of the bills for them, but we also need to make sure that just because the household bills are now part of the rent that energy is not carelessly wasted, which can certainly happen. We needed a smart zoned heating system that was easy for the tenants to use, so they can boost the heating in their individual rooms when they want it, but would also turn down the heat when they are not there and turn it off if they open a window. Genius Hub ticked all of those boxes.

Why did you choose Genius Hub?
It began with a recommendation by the heating engineer we use. But we weren’t going to only take his word for it. In all the research we did, Genius Hub kept on coming back on top, looking at the reviews and other landlords and plumbers that we spoke with, we could see that it was the Genius Hub that was specifically geared to HMOs. The other systems we found were not geared to HMOs and were just basic domestic systems for peoples’ homes and these would easily be tampered with by the tenants.

What were the main considerations before the purchase?
We knew Genius Hub worked in HMOs but what concerned us was that there weren’t enough case histories of other systems. That’s why we decided to trial it for a year ourselves before rolling it out across all of our properties. We were also not sure how much equipment to get, and then how much work was required for the installation. We were pleased to meet one of the Genius Hub engineers at one of the properties at this stage, as all of those questions were answered when we visited some of the properties with our heating engineer and the engineer from Genius Hub.

Was there anything you were concerned about?
Sometimes you were Heat Genius sometimes Genius Hub. We didn’t realise this was because you now control other things as well as heating so you dropped the ‘Heat’ part of your name. When we realised that, it all made more sense as we then found a lot more case studies and examples of people who had used this technology in their properties.

What were your first impressions of the Genius Hub?
We were very impressed. The first person I spoke to gave me a really good feeling; it was clearly a family company with big business mentality. This translated all the way through from the engineer who came to the properties to the technical customer support we get now 12 months after the rollout.

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How did you design and buy the system?
We emailed some room lists over to the office (in Birmingham) and it was designed by Genius Hub. It was really easy. We then got back all of the designs and recommendations for the number of smart thermostats, and smart valves they suggested to go into each property, and once that was checked by our own maintenance man Paul we placed the order. 

How was the installation?
Easy as pie! The tenants were really impressed, it was so quick and unobtrusive, in most cases the tenants didn’t even know that we’d been in, our heating engineer was in and out so fast. This was in part thanks to how Genius Hub preconfigured all of the equipment in their warehouse before it was shipped to the property; so there was no messing around on site. The valves and room sensors were all clearly labeled on the boxes as to which rooms they went into and it was all pre-paired with the Genius Hub part that goes next to the internet router in the property. So all that we had to do is screw on the valves, stick on the sensors and wire in the bit for the boiler, it takes literally minutes!

What do you like about the Genius Hub?
I love the fact that it has an app, so I don’t have to go on my laptop, or even visit the property in some cases. I love how I can set it up and forget about it. After it was first installed there were a few comments from the tenants, as one would expect, but after a few weeks they had all forgotten about it. With the new tenants it is easier as there isn’t a change. Generally everyone likes how it works.

What has been your Genius Hub experience overall?
Pleasant, easy, everyone I spoke with was really nice, knowledgeable and helpful about the system. When I phoned the tech team and I spoke to a lovely lady, she was so helpful! It’s great to have local customer support in the UK.

Have you benefited in any other way?
Yes, we finally can tell when the tenants are using electric heaters and we can do something about it. Portable electric heaters are dangerous, expensive to run and are banned, now we can see on the app when they are being used, due to the sudden spike in temperature.

How do you use the system?
I use it daily on the app and occasionally on my laptop. It’s so handy that I can see if there are any problems in any of the properties at a touch of a button.

How have you found using the app?
Really easy for the basics. There are loads of other settings in there which are also really helpful, I found these when the engineer showed me how to access and use them as well as when I phoned the technical customer support. It’s easy to use given that I’m not that technical really.

Would you recommend the Genius Hub?
100% yes, it’s brilliant and saves me so much time.

Conclusion
I don’t know how Paul coped with it before, how he managed more than 30 properties without Genius Hub. I guess that he just had to deal with the fact that he was watching his money disappear out of the open windows in the Winter, with the heat blasting on and him paying for the gas bill. This is not a problem anymore though and the tenants couldn’t be happier. I’d highly recommend this system to others in our position.

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Min-Y-Gaer

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IMG_5755

MIN-Y-GAER

CASE STUDY

CRICCIETH, WEST WALES

Min-Y-Gaer is a Victorian house overlooking Tremadog Bay in Criccieth, West Wales. It provides accommodation for 14 members of The Pines Care Home staff in 10 individual rooms plus a four-room flat. The house has facilities for communal cooking, some areas for relaxation and there are some offices used by the administrative staff of the care home.

Genius Hub was installed in the property as part of a renovation project in Summer 2017. Owner Andy Paynter had previously had problems with the management of the heating. There had been a standard 7-day programmer and thermostatic radiator valves on most of the radiators but this was not sufficient to provide effective control of the heating.

Shift patterns of the staff meant that some rooms were occupied during the day and some at night. Staff would leave the radiators on and then open windows, which was clearly an inefficient and wasteful use of energy.

Concerns of smart heating controls?
Andy was initially concerned about the number of rooms within the building and was not sure that heating controls would work.

Genius Hub conducted a free site survey and explained how their Genius Radiator Valves are specifically designed to wirelessly receive messages to open or close from the Genius Hub “Brain-Box”, thereby providing individual room-by-room control.

How easy was the installation?
Installation of the Genius Hub is quick and easy but, in this case, Andy chose to use his own electrician to install the system and unfortunately a mistake was made with the boiler wiring. 

Andy told us he quickly got through to the Genius Hub support desk who were “very helpful” and they gave clear and concise advice on how to resolve the issue. Andy said, “It was really good to know that they were there for us.”

Is Genius Hub making savings?
Initially, they used the system with the timings set to be the same as the time-clock they had before. Therefore, the heating was still on most of the time and minimal savings were made. However, as they got used to the system, they started using the Footprint mode. With the Genius Hub Room Sensors, the system learns the usage patterns of a room, automatically heating it, and then turning down the radiator when the room is empty. Genius Hub ensures that the rooms are warm when occupied but never wasting energy. As Andy said, “This is the point where significant savings were made.” Also, the window detection feature means that the system will turn off a radiator if a window is left open.

Now they are used to all the features, they find using the system easy and straightforward. Andy told us, “We can see the savings, as we can see that the tenants only use their rooms for two hours and then leave again. You can feel when you go into a room that’s not being used, the temperature is a little cooler at 18º, not 24º like it used to be! We can actually feel the savings when we go into the room. It’s great!”

What do you like about the system?
The Genius Hub system is automated. So, once it is set up, it is ready to go and users do not have to think about it. The whole system is controllable via a simple app, so there is no need to visit the property. If there are any issues or problems, this can all be viewed from the app. If a tenant would like the temperature a little higher, this is done remotely as well. Andy said that he likes the system because it “just works” and that neither he nor his staff need to worry about it. Maintenance man Liviu, who now looks after the system using a smartphone, loves it.

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Reducing the bills in HMOs and Student Houses

Reducing the bills in HMOs and Student Houses

I often get asked the question from landlords; how do I reduce the heating bills in my HMO (House of Multiple Occupancy) but at the same time not alienate the tenants by them being too cold. The problem is that the tenants want to have control over the heating in their room (which is totally reasonable as they are paying good money to rent that room) but we all know that as the tenants are not paying the bills there is no real incentive to turn the heating down when they leave the room or go away during the holidays. Worst still the tenants can leave the window open when the heating is running if they are too hot!

The solution is to give the landlord control of the heating, but the tenants control of their room. To automatically turn down the room when it is not being used, and automatically shut off the radiators if a window is opened close to them.

Recently we installed the Genius Hub into a number of student houses for Student Cribs because they want to give their tenants premier comfort in their rooms but not have to keep the heating on 24/7 to achieve this

The problem with other systems they had tried in the past is they control the boiler on its own, and this means that money is continuously wasted heating unoccupied rooms. Also these systems often have to be manually triggered by the tenants in the house to boost the boiler, causing complaints from the tenants because they have to get up in the middle of the night to boost the heating, or it is cold in the mornings if they get up before it has been boosted by another member of the house.

Genius Hub solves these problems because it only heats the individual rooms with smart TRVs (Thermostatic Radiator Valves) which replace the existing TRVs. Occupancy detectors notice when the rooms are being used and when they are vacated, so the rooms automatically drop to a set back temperature when the room is left.

Carbon Trust state that for every 1ºC you drop in temperature you save 7% off the heating bill. The Genius Hub automatically drops the temperature by 4ºC in rooms when they are not being used saving 28% when the tenants are not there.

If you add this to not wasting heat with windows being left open and turning the heating down in the holidays the Genius Hub saves landlords more then 30% off their heating bills, and gives them peace of mind that in the spring they will not be stung with an enormous bill because the tenants left the heating on all winter.

Genius Hub is a Carbon Trust accredited product because of the savings that it generates. Student Cribs are using it to help deliver value to their tenants in affordable rent as well as premium comfort in their rooms.

Installation is fast and simple, a typical 6 bed property would take about 2-3 hours. The Genius Hub is installed next to the Internet router and the Genius Valves screw onto the radiator without the need for any re-plumbing. The occupancy sensors can be placed anywhere in the room where they can pick up the tenant in the room.

Student Cribs are benefiting from the savings and the tenants are benefiting from the better comfort when they are in the rooms, it really is a win-win solution.

If you would like to get information about smart heating in HMOs please get in touch with me directly or contact the office at enquiry@geniushub.co.uk or 0121 667 8000.

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