About
Guscott Heating Services is a heating and renewables installer based in Kent, and covering the Southeast. The company services existing gas boiler customers from its plumbing and heating business, while increasingly focusing on heat pumps and underfloor heating projects.
James Armstrong, Operations Director at Guscott, joined the company in late 2017. He oversaw Guscott’s first heat pump installation in 2019. The team has grown from two people in 2018 to 15 today.
"At the start, it was a steady uplift, but in the last two years, it's really taken off."
The Challenge
A full day per survey
Before Spruce, a single heat loss survey could take an entire day. James would arrive at a property with pen and paper, sketch every room by hand, measure with a laser, and note down every dimension. Vaulted ceilings meant drawing the geometry from scratch. Once back at the office, all of it had to be re-entered into their previous heat loss software, which didn't flag errors.
Guscott had issues with their previous tools, which never produced documents that customers could understand without a follow-up phone call. Heat loss summaries went out as attachments, and James would routinely spend extra time on the phone explaining what each figure meant.
Admin capping growth
A few years ago, heat pump enquiries started arriving faster than Guscott could survey them. The team was caught between two options: hire more admin people to keep up, or find better tools. James was already in the office full-time managing operations. The more time he spent on heat loss admin, the less he had for the survey work itself.
"We let a few jobs slide past because we didn't have the capacity. It was taking so long to do heat pump admin."
The Solution
Qualifying before the survey
The biggest change to James's day-to-day is what happens before he even books a survey. The Spruce form on Guscott's website captures property details, EPC information and customer requirements directly from the homeowner. By the time James picks up the phone for the initial call, he can see key property details and what the rough heat loss looks like.
That changes the call from fact-finding to qualifying. James can flag insulation gaps, suggest property upgrades, or confirm viability before booking anyone in. The result is fewer wasted site visits and a better qualified leads.
Heat loss in hours
The on-site survey itself is now visual and structured. Walls are drawn by tracing a floor plan. Mistakes get flagged before the survey ends.
One of Guscott's heat loss assessors had spent decades working with pen and paper. He was reluctant about the switch and resistant to the training. Now, he uses Spruce daily and is constantly interacting with the team.
"Before Spruce, it could take a full day to complete a heat loss survey. Now with Spruce, I get everything wrapped up in a couple of hours."
The Results
Key outcomes:
Business pivot: 95% gas boilers → predominantly heat pumps
Team growth: 2 → 15 staff
Faster heat loss & design: Full day → a couple of hours per property
Reduced admin time: Around a quarter of what it used to take
The pivot didn't happen because the gas boiler work disappeared. Guscott still services its long-standing boiler customer base, and that side of the business helps the company keep moving while the heat pump volume grows. What changed is the ratio. The heat pump side, which used to be a small corner of the business, is now the larger side.
James points to the heat loss workflow as the thing that made the difference. Without faster, more accurate heat losses, the admin time alone would have capped how many heat pump jobs Guscott could take on. The team would have needed to hire more office staff to keep up with enquiries rather than redirecting time into the technical side.
"We've gone from 95% boilers to maybe 60% heat pumps now. A large part of why we've scaled is Spruce, because it's made the heat loss survey easier."
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