Three hours in the house, three more at the desk
A heat pump survey means going room by room: dimensions, ceiling height, each window and door, wall construction, floor type, what's above and below, the existing radiator in each room. The surveyor fills a clipboard with sketches and numbers. Back at the office, the designer types it all into the heat loss software, finds the bathroom window missing, and rings the surveyor.
The surveyor can't remember whether the back bedroom had one window or two.
Multiply that by every heat pump survey in a busy month, and the designer spends more time deciphering clipboards than designing systems.
Why the data gets entered twice
Heat loss design software is built for data entry at a desk. Surveys happen in the house. Clipboard notes are quick to write and slow to read. Photos help, but they're not labelled, and working out which photo shows which room takes time.
Room-by-room design needs every room complete. One gap holds up the whole design.
| Survey item | What gets lost |
|---|---|
| Room dimensions | Misread handwriting |
| Windows and doors | One missed per room |
| Wall and floor construction | Assumed later |
| Adjacent spaces | Not noted |
| Existing emitters | Size not recorded |
Different surveyors also record things differently. One notes wall construction as 'solid brick', another as 'nine inch', a third leaves it for the designer to guess from the photos. The designer then has to interpret each surveyor's style before starting work.
What double entry costs
Designer time goes on typing and chasing. Designs are delayed while gaps are filled. Return visits to measure one room cost a morning. And errors in the data flow straight into the design, where they affect the system you install and the customer's comfort.
Design standards and methods are for your designer and the scheme you work under. We're dealing with getting the data in cleanly.
It also delays the customer. A heat pump design that waits a week for data entry and questions is a week longer before the customer sees a proposal, and customers comparing installers notice who comes back first.
Estimates of fabric that were guessed later, rather than recorded on site, are a particular worry, because they can change the heat loss of a room considerably.
The survey capture we build
- Room list: the surveyor sets up the rooms at the start, or picks them from a floor plan if one exists.
- Room forms: each room has a form in the order your designer works: dimensions, heights, windows and doors, fabric, adjacency and existing emitter.
- Measurements: values can be typed or taken from a laser measure that pairs with a tablet.
- Photos by room: each photo is tagged to its room as it's taken.
- Gap check: before leaving, the surveyor sees any room with missing details.
- Export: the data is exported in the format your heat loss software imports, or laid out so the designer can enter it quickly without interpreting notes.
We build the room form with your designer, so the fields and their order match the design tool they use, and test it on a real survey before it goes to the whole team.
Designs start from complete data
The designer receives a complete, legible survey on the day it's done. Return visits for missing measurements become rare. Photos are where they should be. And the survey record stays with the job, useful if the customer later asks why a room has a particular radiator.
Surveyors also get better. Because every survey is complete and consistent, the designer's questions become about real design choices, not about missing windows, and surveyors learn what matters for the design.
Is your survey process like this?
- Surveys are recorded on paper and typed up later.
- Designers ring surveyors about missing details.
- Return visits are needed to measure missed rooms.
- Photos aren't linked to rooms.
- Designs wait for survey data to be entered.