Established in 2000, Saxon Weald is a housing association managing around 6,500 homes across Sussex and Hampshire. They provide affordable rented and shared ownership homes for individuals and families, as well as properties exclusively for the over 55s. Saxon Weald also provides specialist Extra Care schemes, designed for the over 60s who may need support with day-to-day living.
For the last 12 months, the housing provider has been trialling Cistermiser’s LinkThru, the solution that provides constant 24/7 remote IoT monitoring of water system temperatures and flow events. Combining cloud technology with compact Temperature Monitoring Unit (TMU) hardware devices affixed to pipework at sentinel locations, LinkThru provides accurate data, audit trails and identifies potential issues and flags alerts to help manage water system compliance and safety to help ensure building owner compliance to HSG 274, thus reducing the risk of Legionella.
Ian Bamforth, Assistant Director – Asset Management at Saxon Weald comments: “We have trialled LinkThru TMU for IoT temperature monitoring and are delighted with the way the system operates and assists us to manage water compliance. At Saxon Weald we are always looking for robust innovations that help us provide a safe environment for our residents, as well as providing our organisation with more effective property management tools. We have now moved onto the next stage of rolling out this technology across all of our Extra Care schemes, working closely with the team at Cistermiser.”
Kevin Belben, Technical Applications Manager at water management specialists Cistermiser and Keraflo, comments: “If ever our healthcare sector and looking after older people was under the spotlight, it’s now in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis. But the challenge of planning and delivering care and housing for an ageing population is not new. It’s a major theme for us all, not only personally but encompassing every housing, care and health partner in the private and public sectors.
“All good innovations solve a problem and LinkThru solves a problem of the sheer scale of checking water systems manually. Traditionally, healthcare estates engineers or even designated carers and nurses are sent to tour washrooms and turn taps on and off at well-used and under-utilised outlets, take temperature readings using a probe or thermistor at sentinel points each month, or perhaps even on a weekly basis, record the data, and then email or manually input the data into whatever collation method the organisation is using, such as an electronic log-book. Traditionally an estates engineer recording data could have thousands of temperature readings to sort through, analyse, and, where necessary, respond to with remedial action each week. Not only is this strategy open to human error, but inordinate amounts of time are spent by staff who could be otherwise more valuably engaged. But the worst case scenario of getting things wrong, in addition to time and cost, is the very real threat of Legionella outbreaks in buildings that are already housing more vulnerable people.
“That’s why it is encouraging that forward-thinking providers like Saxon Weald are taking the first step. Now is the time to look at harnessing technology to support the necessary drive for safe, healthy homes for this fast-growing demographic. With safety, efficiency, cost reduction and evidencing all key priorities at the heart of the sector, the benefits of remote water monitoring solutions like LinkThru all indicate that innovations like LinkThru represent the future of this sector.”
For more information about IoT monitoring from Cistermiser, please visit www.linkthru.com
