Halton Housing, the innovative and trail-blazing housing trust with a firm commitment to investment in technology, identified a requirement for a scalable solution to their challenge of remote, predictive monitoring of environmental issues.
Following a competitive period of evaluation of the Internet of Things (IoT) market place, Pinacl presented their solution to a panel of industry experts at Sensor City, earlier this year.
This winning pitch resulted in Pinacl’s Social Housing monitoring system being selected to be rolled out to a cross-section of Halton Housing’s 7,500 properties.
Pinacl’s Housing Solution aims to reduce maintenance costs of properties by deploying sensors to gain real-time insights into the health of each property, enabling the Housing Provider’s limited resources to better support tenants and avoid costly refurbishments.
The sensors will monitor and report on humidity, temperature and CO2 levels via a Smart dashboard, enabling Halton Housing to identify challenges with each property and predict issues such as the onset of damp.
Gary Thatcher, Sales Manager at Pinacl said: “Early detection of damp conditions is vital to prevent the spread of potentially toxic mould and mildew throughout properties, causing significant cost and time-consuming repair works.
“Our solution is able to automatically generate alerts when thresholds are exceeded, proactively alerting the Housing Provider to take corrective action, so that the property and tenant remain healthy.”
Pinacl’s sensors will also measure CO2 levels, comparing the usual CO2 levels expected for the number of tenants occupying the property to the actual level of CO2 present. If the CO2 readings remain high over a period of time this insight could indicate potentially undeclared tenants residing in the property, poor ventilation or even illegal activity.
Sensor City, who helped coordinate the Environmental Assessment Technology Challenge, has also deployed a LoRaWAN gateway in Liverpool which will provide the connectivity and backhaul for Pinacl’s Social Housing Solution.
A joint venture between the University of Liverpool and Liverpool John Moores University, Sensor City is a Global Innovation Hub based in Liverpool’s Knowledge Quarter which works to facilitate the deployment of IoT technologies into businesses, and help companies progress from novel concepts to working prototypes with speed and accuracy.
Dr Joanne Phoenix, Business Development Manager at Sensor City said: “We saw a great response to this Challenge from the sensor and IoT community with good quality new technologies and we are delighted that Halton Housing are putting Pinacl’s sensor solution into field trials.”
Gary Thatcher added: “It’s fantastic to see Universities and their spin offs engaging with the wider business community to provide a platform to enable the adoption of new technologies.
“Pinacl are particularly pleased to be working with Halton Housing, who are respected in their industry as early adopters of emerging technologies, to drive business change and digital transformation, delivering a higher quality and more proactive service to their tenants.”