What care providers can do right now to improve comfort and cut energy bills

The care sector in Australia is a growing industry, spanning aged care, disability support, and accommodation for vulnerable people. The demand for quality facilities is growing, and rightly so. But many of the buildings these providers operate aren’t new. They’re older, built to the standards of their time, with heating and cooling systems approaching end of life and building envelopes that weren’t designed with today’s energy costs or climate pressures in mind.
These buildings have specific engineering challenges and the people living in them, often elderly and vulnerable, are the ones who feel the consequences of poor building performance most acutely.
We’ve seen this firsthand.

The problem that doesn’t show up in a standard assessment

Through our work with care providers, we’ve encountered a reality that standard building assessments don’t capture. Residents turning off their hot water and having cold showers because they’re worried about the electricity bill. People living in homes that drop below the 18°C safety threshold, reaching as low as 10°C on winter nights, because they won’t use the heating. The health consequences of that, over months and years, are significant.
This is energy poverty, and it’s more common in vulnerable housing than most people realise. It’s not a problem you’ll find flagged in a compliance report but it’s the problem that drives a lot of the work we do in this space, because the engineering decisions made on these buildings directly affect the wellbeing of the people inside them.

Getting involved early: the Patricia Larkin project

Wintringham is a provider of care for aged and vulnerable people. When they were planning Patricia Larkin, a new development in Bendigo comprising around 35 individual dwellings across seven buildings, we were involved from the very beginning. At the point where Wintringham was seeking funding from the Victorian government.
That early involvement was critical. It meant the right strategies could be costed into the funding application, approved, and ultimately built.
Three interventions on this project stand out.

SolShare: solar that reaches residents

Multi-unit buildings have a well-known problem with solar: the panels go on the roof, but the energy feeds into the communal switchboard. Residents don’t see the benefit on their individual bills.
On Patricia Larkin, we introduced SolShare, a system that distributes the centralised solar array directly to individual dwellings. Each resident’s meter sees less energy coming through from the grid, and they pay lower bills as a result.
It’s a straightforward concept, but it makes a genuine difference to people who are watching every dollar on their electricity.

Airtightness and heat recovery ventilation

Airtightness is something that doesn’t get done particularly well in Australian construction, across any building type. We’ve been through a significant number of projects where we’ve set airtightness targets and strategies, and that experience shaped our approach on Patricia Larkin.
We set the targets, worked with the architect on the detailing, briefed the builder so they understood what was required, attended prototype testing on site, and witnessed the final airtightness testing. The result: fewer drafts, less dust, cleaner indoor air, and lower energy consumption.
But sealing a building up creates its own challenges. Without controlled ventilation, you end up with moisture problems and poor air quality; or open windows that ruins the energy savings and comfort. So, we paired the airtightness strategy with heat recovery ventilation: a system that continuously provides filtered outside air into each dwelling while recovering the energy from the outgoing air.
This was particularly important for Wintringham. They’d had moisture problems on previous projects, and this approach addressed that while also improving comfort and reducing energy costs. It was one of the key reasons they were prepared to commit to the airtightness strategy.
These strategies worked because they were there from the start. They were funded, designed in, and followed through to construction.

When the building already exists: the Coburg project

Not every project starts from scratch. For the same client, we worked on an existing building in Coburg. The team technically didn’t have to touch the walls because they weren’t being modified but we wanted to understand what was happening inside those dwellings.
The standard approach, what Building Code and most ESD frameworks require, assumes the building is fully air-conditioned. The models are run on that basis, and if the air conditioning is doing its job, everything looks fine on paper.
But thermal comfort is about more than air temperature. If you’re sitting near a cold, uninsulated wall, you’ll feel cold even if the room temperature reads 21 degrees. Around 45% of body heat is lost through radiation to surrounding surfaces, so cold walls drag perceived warmth well below what the thermostat says. In poorly insulated homes, heating systems have to overwork to compensate, which drives up energy bills and still leaves residents feeling uncomfortable.
And that’s assuming the heating is on. If residents aren’t turning it on, or using it sparingly, because they’re worried about the bill, the standard model won’t flag a problem at all.
With this knowledge, we modelled the building in various scenarios such as free-running, meaning no mechanical heating or cooling operating, and frugal usage. In these scenarios, the difference between an uninsulated wall and even a lightly insulated wall becomes significant. A room that might sit at 18 degrees with some insulation could drop to 10 degrees overnight without it.
That analysis gave Wintringham the evidence to justify putting wall insulation in, even though it wasn’t required by regulation. And they did.
For older buildings across the care sector, and there are many, this is the question worth asking: if your residents can’t afford to run the heating, how cold does it get? And what can you practically do about it?

The 2027 gas phase-out

For many care providers, these questions are about to become more pressing. From 2027, when a gas hot water system reaches end of life, it can’t be replaced with another gas unit. That means decisions about what replaces it, where the new equipment goes, whether the site has enough electrical capacity, and how it all fits with any other building works being planned.
A heat pump doesn’t just slot in where a gas unit sat. It needs more space, good airflow, and potentially upgraded mains and switchboards. For providers managing portfolios of older buildings, the time to start thinking about this is now, not when the old system fails.
This is an area where we can help. We provide electrification studies that cover the key considerations: planning for upgrades, identifying where new plant can go, assessing power availability, and mapping out how electrification fits alongside other building works. It’s a practical, high-level assessment designed to give providers clarity on what’s ahead.

Making sure it gets built

Good design and good analysis only matter if the building gets constructed properly. On both the Patricia Larkin and Coburg projects, our role extended well beyond the design phase.
We stayed close to the construction process, monitoring that airtightness detailing was installed correctly, that solar systems made it into the build, and that builders followed through on what was specified. We attended site inspections, witnessed testing, and worked directly with the construction teams to make sure they understood what was required and why.
Verification that things get built the way they’re intended is one of the biggest gaps in Australian construction. It’s something we take seriously, and we are passionate about, because the strategies we recommend only deliver value if they survive contact with reality.

Buildings that work harder for the people inside them

The care sector is rapidly growing, and the residents living in these buildings, whether aged care, vulnerable, community housing, deserve buildings that are comfortable, healthy, and affordable to run.
Whether it’s a new build where the right strategies can be designed in from day one, or an older building where the right analysis can identify what upgrades will make a real difference, the engineering matters. It starts with getting involved early, asking the right questions, and following through from funding application to finished building.
That’s what sustainability that sticks looks like in practice.
If you’re a care provider thinking about your building portfolio, we’d be happy to have that conversation.
Ready to build with clarity? Get in touch.