Smart technology for later living developments: comfort, oversight and lower running costs
The UK needs far more later living homes than it builds. The government's Older People's Housing Taskforce estimated in its report Our Future Homes that 30,000 to 50,000 new later living homes are needed each year, against around 7,000 currently built. The developments that close that gap will be judged on how well they let people live independently, comfortably and affordably for years.
Technology has a particular brief in these buildings. It has to make each apartment easier to live in, give the management team a clear view of how the building is running, and keep site costs under control, all without making a home feel like an institution. This post covers what smart technology for later living developments should do, what it should be trusted to do, and how to specify it.
What should technology do in a later living development?
Three jobs, for three groups of people. For residents, it should make everyday comfort effortless: warm rooms, good light and fresh air, without asking anything of them. For the management team, it should give real visibility of conditions across the site and control of the communal spaces from one place. For the developer and operator, it should reduce the cost of running the building over its whole life.
Underneath all three sits a tone. Later living residents are living in their own homes, and the best technology in these buildings is the kind nobody notices. It should support independence discreetly and never feel clinical. We looked at the resident's side of this in our post on how home automation can help people live independently for longer. This post takes the developer's and operator's view.
How does it keep residents comfortable without asking anything of them?
By handling the everyday adjustments automatically. Heating settles to a comfortable schedule in every room, measured by sensors in each room rather than a single thermostat in the hallway. Lighting scenes set the right level for the time of day, and a low, gentle light can come on in a hallway at night when someone gets up, so nobody is feeling for a switch in the dark. Blinds can close against afternoon glare and heat on their own.
When residents do want to change something, the controls are simple. Clearly labelled keypads on the wall do the everyday jobs, and the app is there for those who want it rather than being required. Because the system is hardwired, nothing residents rely on day to day needs Wi-Fi or an internet connection, so their heating and lights keep working if the broadband goes down.
What can a management team actually see?
The conditions in each room and across the building. Environmental sensing reports temperature, humidity, CO2, VOCs and light levels in real time, and lighting, heating, shading and security across communal areas and private apartments can be managed from one platform.
Alerts can then be configured against thresholds the operator chooses, and delivered as a mobile push notification or on a touch panel. For example:
It is worth being precise about what this is. The data describes the room: how warm it is, how humid, how fresh the air. It is monitoring of the environment, not of the person, and what residents do in their own homes remains their own business. For a development built around independence, that is the right line to hold, and it is the one we hold to.
Where do the running cost savings come from?
From heating, lighting and ventilating only what is in use. Communal lounges, corridors and dining spaces can run to schedules and motion timers rather than at full output all day. Heating switches off in a room when a window is opened. An apartment standing empty between residents can be held on a frost preset instead of being heated as if it were occupied. And where time-of-day tariffs apply, schedules can be set to avoid the most expensive hours.
Individually these are modest. Across a whole site, every day, for the life of the building, they add up to a meaningful reduction in operational cost, and the operator is the one who benefits.
Why does it need to be built in from the start?
Because adding it later means disrupting people in their homes. Chasing cables into occupied apartments is exactly the kind of upheaval a later living development should spare its residents, and wireless alternatives bring batteries to change and devices to maintain in every apartment.
Installed during construction, the system becomes part of the building's fabric: a mortgageable asset rather than a removable add-on, which strengthens the developer's case as much as the operator's. Baulogic is pre-configured off-site and installed by the site's qualified electricians at first and second fix, with no specialist integrator required. Each scheme is quoted individually, and once quoted the price is fixed and transparent.
The design has to be settled before first fix, so the decision belongs at specification stage. Our home automation specification timeline shows when each decision needs to be made.
What should operators ask before specifying?
The clearest way to specify technology for later living is to work backwards from a resident's ordinary day and the operator's annual accounts. A resident should wake to a warm apartment, move around it safely at night and never have to think about the controls. The operator should see how the building is running, hear about a problem with the room before anyone has to report it, and pay to heat and light only what is in use. Specify for those outcomes and the technology will do its job quietly for the life of the building.
If you are planning a later living development and want to talk through the specification before first fix, see how Baulogic works with developers.
More Insights
.png)
