PBSA smart technology: controlling energy, empty summers and wear across a student scheme

What makes student accommodation different to run?

Three things, mostly. The first is who pays. All-inclusive rents are common in PBSA, so the resident has little reason to turn anything down and the operator carries the cost of a radiator left on full with the window open.

The second is turnover. Every year a new intake arrives who knows nothing about the building. Anything that needs explaining, pairing to a phone or setting up will generate a queue at the front desk in the first week of term.

The third is the calendar. A building designed around full occupancy spends a significant part of the year with many of its rooms empty, and it needs to behave sensibly in both states.

Where does the energy go, and how does control take the waste out?

Heating, ventilation and lighting, in that order for most buildings. The Carbon Trust notes that heating, ventilation and air conditioning can account for the majority of the money an organisation spends on energy, which is why control of them pays back first.

In a student building, the practical measures are straightforward:

• Heating that responds to open windows. When a window is opened, the heating in that room switches off automatically. Our post on open-window heating control explains how it works.
• Schedules set by the operator. Heating runs to times and temperatures the operator chooses, so rooms and shared kitchens are warm when they are used rather than all day.
• Ventilation that reacts to the air. Small rooms with en-suite showers are prone to condensation. When humidity or CO₂ rises past a set level, the system can boost the MVHR automatically, as described in our post on humidity and CO2 control. Better air for residents, and fewer mould complaints for the maintenance team.
• Communal lighting on motion timers. Corridors, stairwells and common rooms light when they are in use and settle back when they are not.
• Tariff-aware scheduling. Where time-of-day tariffs apply, heating schedules can be set to avoid the most expensive hours.

How should a student building handle the summer?

Deliberately, rather than by leaving every room as the last resident left it. When a cluster or floor empties, it can be moved to a frost or away preset: heating held at a protective minimum, lights off, and blinds on the sunny side of the building closed to limit solar gain. Frost protection keeps the building safe from the cold end of the calendar too.

If part of the building is let over the summer, for summer schools, conferences or short stays, those rooms can be brought back to normal operation in groups while the rest stays quiet. And before the September intake arrives, the whole building can be returned to its term-time settings without a room-by-room walk round.

Will the hardware survive student use?

It needs to, and this is where the choice of system shows. Consumer wireless devices are built for a single household that looks after them. In student accommodation they are knocked, unplugged, reset and occasionally taken home.

A hardwired system avoids most of that. The keypads are wired into the wall, there are no batteries to go flat in hundreds of rooms, and nothing a resident relies on day to day needs Wi-Fi or an internet connection, so the heating and lights keep working whatever happens to the network. Controls can be clearly labelled so a new resident understands them on the first evening without downloading anything.

When a part does need replacing, any qualified electrician can do it. Our post on whether an electrician can install home automation explains why that matters for long-term maintenance.

What does the operator see across the site?

The building, from one place. Lighting, heating, shading and security across rooms and communal areas can be overseen centrally, and alerts can be configured against thresholds the operator sets: a room climbing above a set temperature, humidity staying high in a block, or a plant-room door opened out of hours. Alerts arrive as a mobile push notification or on a touch panel, so the team hears about a problem before a resident reports it.

How does it fit the build?

A student scheme is a repeating building, and the technology should repeat with it. Baulogic is pre-configured off-site for each room type and arrives ready to install, so the site's qualified electricians fit it at first and second fix without a specialist integrator on the programme. The same specification then deploys from the first room to the last, which is the approach we describe in our post on scalable home automation for any build size.

Each scheme is quoted individually, and once quoted the price is fixed and transparent. The system does need to be designed before first fix, so it is a decision for the specification stage.