Overheating & the elderly.

Written by Oliver Eggenton

Forget pensions, are you going to be too hot to enjoy your retirement?

Nearing your twilight years can be a daunting experience, and when it comes to thermal comfort you will certainly feel colder in the winter and find it harder to regulate your temperature in the summer. Add the anxieties of climate change then you have the added concern of longer, hotter, summers and colder, wetter, winters.

Why, as we get older, we feel the cold more and why, as we get older, we find it more difficult to regulate our temperature is something that until now has been widely unresearched.

What might ease some of the apprehensions is the knowledge that some of our brightest minds are working behind the scenes to ensure that we can be comfortable in older age whatever the weather. Some of these bright minds are based at the University College of London, working on a project called ‘ClimaCare’.

In the UK, because of Climate Change, we are gradually experiencing longer warmer summers. For the foreseeable future, the gradual change may not seem overly alarming, rather, perhaps a welcomed excuse to tan without needing to travel abroad. However, for some groups of people, in certain circumstances and locations, this gradual change can be a real threat to health. As well as warming temperatures, the UK has an ageing population; people over the age of 75 will account for 13% of the population by 2035 and these people often spend most of their time in residential environments or care settings. Because heat stress can impact the health of the elderly much more than it can with younger generations, it is important that we future proof care settings to ensure that their time spent indoors, is enjoyable and thermally ‘comfortable’. Research by University College of London (UCL) has already indicated that care facilities are presently overheating, even under non-extreme settings. 

ClimaCare is a research project initiated by UCL which is looking to research existing conditions and future proof care settings in line with rising temperatures to mitigate the impacts of heat stress. Here at Shade the UK we have been fortunate enough to help the researchers at UCL on this project.

The ClimaCare project has been sectioned into two phases, the first being research into existing care home conditions and the associated health impacts of overheating; phase 1 has now concluded.

A few findings from ClimaCare1

Five London Care Homes were studied over the summer of 2019 as part of ClimaCare 1. Of the five Care Homes, all were found at some point to be exceeding the daily recommended temperature of 26oC set out by Public Health England. The mean daily temperatures over the summer ranged between 23oC and 29oC. In heatwaves, indoor daily maximum temperatures between 31.2 and 34.2oC were recorded (see the figure below extracted from ClimaCare). Despite these high average and maximum temperatures, the study also revealed that residents appeared to be content and ‘thermally comfortable’, while staff reported feeling hotter in heatwave periods. 

In terms of building performance, ClimaCare1 indicated that the building construction age of care homes is a key determinant factor for overheating risk, with higher summer thermal comfort reported by staff and residents in older, heavyweight buildings.Simulation analysis suggested that older buildings characterised by higher rates of heat loss and higher levels of thermal mass are likely to benefit more from the application of high albedo materials rather than external shading methods, whereas recently constructed buildings with higher levels of thermal insulation appear to benefit more from higher ventilation rates and appropriate external shading systems. Through the same simulation analysis, night ventilation was discovered to be the single most effective passive cooling technique for all building types and construction ages (see graph and table below with all passive measures tested in the simulation).

Dynamic thermal modelling results from ClimaCare1 show that mean internal temperatures in the five care homes remained predominantly above the 26oC threshold during the five-day heatwave period and are projected to remain at significantly higher levels under future climate scenarios. The increase in care home indoor temperature because of climate change is estimated to be +2oC and +4oC in 2050 and 2080, respectively.

In summary, ClimaCare1 has helped unveil existing overheating problems in London-based care settings. In identifying these issues, more research can now commence, to assess how we can best mitigate the impacts of overheating and minimise the effect of climate change.

Future research opportunities

The learnings from ClimaCare1, have led to an upscaling of research, now forming part of ClimaCare2. ClimaCare1 concludes with three routes of future action to guide ClimaCare2 in generating positive impact in the care industry:

Pathway 1: By providing building construction practitioners responsible for the design and delivery of health care and extra care homes with improved climate change adaptation design and decision-making tools. This will facilitate the development of best practice guidance provided by professional organisations and associations.

Pathway 2: By providing policymakers and regulators, such as CQC, with evidence-based recommendations to help revise regulation and policies pertaining to thermal comfort and energy efficiency in care settings.

Pathway 3: By providing care home managers, frontline staff, and residents with best practice guidelines for the optimum operation of care environments in a warming climate.

The second phase acts on the information discovered in the first, with additional data now being collected from 50 care homes around the UK as opposed to 5. The data will be used to create a building stock model to help predict future overheating risks. It is the hope of the researchers that this project will then help to shape policy, producing refined guidance for practitioners, businesses, and policymakers.

The ClimaCare2 project is due to conclude in October of 2022. The findings and subsequent policy changes will ensure that we are all more comfortable in later life and encourage action to ensure that those already in care homes see improvements to their local climate.

What can you do from home to help?

We hope that the above gives a good insight in to ongoing research, but you don’t have to be a research fellow at the UCL to assist with cooling in the built environment. To help, encourage and employ passive cooling techniques, be it at your own home, a family member’s or maybe even a new housing development you are working on.

Open windows before reaching for the fan in the daytime, make sure your home can breathe at night. Before installing air conditioning, install window shades.

If mechanical cooling becomes the conventional method to deal with rising temperatures, then we will use more energy and in turn, emit more greenhouse gases, accelerating climate change - a negative feedback cycle. 

If you have to use a fan or air-conditioning, chances are, you have a property that might be south-facing; could you power your cooling devices with electricity from photovoltaic solar panels?

Don’t paint outdoor surfaces dark colours or replace greenery with pavement, vegetation is cooling and dark colours absorb more heat!  Check in on relatives, especially those most vulnerable, in hot periods!  Make sure they have access to water at all times of the day.