What Is The Minimum Temperature For Care Home For The Elderly

[Tazzywazzy86]

I work in a care home that's dementia and residential, we have underfloor heating which is an absolute nightmare. It's either roasting hot or freezing cold. I work nights and for the last two weeks or so it has been so cold and a lot of the residents seem to be developing chesty coughs. I recorded 18c in one of the bedrooms

[Buenchico]

For the general population, 18C to 20C is the temperature range which should be aimed at in offices, in schools and in homes. (Anything much above 20C tends reduce people's ability to function at their best).

However (again for the general population) when people are actually in bed (rather than, say, using their bedroom as a study), there's no real need for any heating in bedrooms unless, perhaps, the temperature is close to freezing outside. (I've certainly never heated a bedroom).

So 18C would seem to be a rather high temperature in a bedroom (where people are actually in bed) and not particularly unacceptable at other times. Elderly people might require slightly higher temperatures (when they're not in bed), but not substantially so.

Public Health England used to recommend that people heat their living rooms to 21C and their bedrooms to 18C but they've now revised their recommendation to suggest that 18C is perfectly acceptable throughout for most people:
https://publichealthmatters.blog.gov.uk/2014/10/21/preventing-avoidable-deaths-this-winter/
However they do note, in that document, that some people might require rather higher temperatures.

There is no statutory minimum temperature in any workplace but the Health and Safety Executive works to a guideline figure of 16C:
http://www.hse.gov.uk/temperature/faq.htm#minimum-maximum-temperature

[Old_Geezer]

Hmph. 64½°F is blooming cold for a place where you aren't moving much to get warm. If I ended up in a "care" home that set my room to that I'd conclude I was being tortured for someone's perverted pleasure. Better have high tog quilts available for 24hr continuous use.

[EDDIE51]

The care home I worked at had the temp set at 23 deg C. The residents still complained they were too cold. ( I was too hot)
But with the need to cut costs, I can see they may reduce the set point a few degrees.

[KARL]

Each individual's temperature requirement is different, women generally need a higher temperature than men, older people generally need a higher temperature than the young, etc. The further below an individual's need the ambient temperature is, the more external help he/she needs in the form of room heating. Considering how cold the country is most of the year, in the UK room heating has an unusually low priority compared to countries elsewhere in Europe with a similarly long cold season, and habits reflect this directly. In the UK thermostats are set lower and even at that rationing by timed heating is very common. Additionally, people are urged to, while indoors, put on cold weather clothing or even go into bed for warmth - hence people from much colder countries feel cold when visiting the UK and regard the UK variously as poverty stricken or simply backward - they do not accept the argument for the health benefits of being cold because the average life expectancy they have (statistically) is higher than that of the UK population. I know of no other country calling itself advanced where the outdoor temperature more or less directly dictates the indoor temperature. In other North-European countries with a better reputation in looking after their elderly, it is common to keep temperatures in care/nursing homes, hospitals, etc. at around 298 degrees K.

The general introduction of central heating was slower in the UK than elsewhere and bad/wrong designs were commonplace until relatively recently but the UK has been catching up. What you describe is an inability to control heat levels in the space you occupy and are in charge of. Perhaps (I think most likely) the heating system you live with is itself simply in some way faulty.

Oh, K stands for Kelvin (absolute temperature scale) and is 273 degrees higher than Celsius (298K = 25C). I know a word that begins with F but I don't think it has anything to do with the measurement of temperature.

[mg4345]

I work for a company that goes round fixing under floor heating (ufh) installations for care home providers. The 2 main issues with ufh are users not understanding it and failings in components.
Users need to be educated so that they understand that ufh is very slow response - like 4-8hrs. So if you're hot - turning down the thermostat to minimum won't make it cool down any faster but will ensure you will be very cold in 4-8hrs. If you then turn it up to maximum it won't heat up any faster but it will ensure you will be very hot in 4-8hrs. I recommend that users only every adjust the temperature by 1degree in either direction every 2 hrs. This seems very slow but 1 degree actually makes a big difference and if you take this approach 9times out of 10 you will hit the right temperature for you and you won't have to adjust again.
The other issue can be component failure. UFH is much more complicated than radiators with lots of parts that can fail (or be installed incorrectly in the first place.) This can only be investigated by an engineer who knows what they are doing with the right gear including a thermal imaging camera to trace buried pipework.
Matt - from sustain