Insights

Why we started Spruce 🌲

Insights

Why we started Spruce 🌲

Post

21 Jun 2024

Heat pumps

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We’re building tools to help ambitious heat pump installers run their business without all the pain, hassle, and manual process that they have to deal with at the moment. We believe the only way to seriously accelerate the roll out of heat pumps, let alone hit 600,000 a year by 2028 (the UK government target), is to put the needs of heating engineers and installation businesses front and centre.

The value of heating engineers

The ~8,000 heat pump engineers in the UK have invested a huge amount of their own time and money in up-skilling. They’ve spent countless hours helping nervous homeowners through the process of decarbonising their heating. And they’ve amassed a wealth of knowledge, skills, and experience, which is essential if the UK is going to make meaningful progress towards decarbonising its 26 million homes.

But despite this, it seems that their problems and frustrations haven't been listened to, and it remains pretty challenging to run and grow a heat pump business.

Current challenges

An average heat pump installer spends the majority of their time not doing installations – instead their time is spent dealing with enquiries that don’t convert, manually collecting and processing data from people’s homes, and doing a huge amount of paperwork.

There are number of understandable reasons for this:

  • Installing a heat pump is complex, particularly compared to a gas boiler – it’s important to correctly size a heat pump, and a change to low temperature heating requires data on individual rooms and detailed calculations to size heat emitters and pipes.

  • Regulations designed largely to protect consumers have inadvertently caused issues for installers, creating a lot of paperwork to be filled in during and after every job.

  • And UK homeowners are nervous about seemingly new technology and understandably worried about both the upfront cost and staying warm, so need careful handholding.

But although the reasons might be understandable, they are still having a big impact: despite working long hours, often including evenings and weekends, installers frequently struggle with low profit margins and lack the time and resource to scale their businesses.

They need access to better solutions that free up their time so they can do more installations, train new engineers, or simply get more time with their families! All while ensuring they properly benefit financially from this transition.

Spruce is designed by and for engineers

This is why we started Spruce.

Our Estimate Tool helps handle enquiries – allowing installers to respond in minutes not days, and separating the serious enquiries from the time-wasters. Our Survey & Design Tool then manages the heat loss survey, system design, and report creation – eliminating manual data transfers and enabling detailed heat loss and design reports to be sent within hours of finishing the survey.

Our tools are easy to use so engineers can get up and running without long training courses, and will flexibly fit into existing processes. Everything we build has been shaped by the phenomenal installers we work with and we’re continually making improvements based on the feedback we receive.

We’d love to hear from you – please do reach out to hello@spruce.eco if you'd like to discuss any of the above or if you’re interested in learning more about the tools we provide .

21 Jun 2024

Heat pumps

Post

21 Jun 2024

Heat pumps

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The value of heating engineers
Current challenges
Spruce is designed by and for engineers

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©️ Spruce Energy Ltd, 2024.

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©️ Spruce Energy Ltd, 2024.