With many organisations now looking at having their premises being left unoccupied for the foreseeable future, we have provided a check list of things to consider to ensure that the energy usage (and cost) is minimised during this time:

• Turn off all heating by deleting the time programmes from the controller (make a note of them, so you know what to reset them to when you come back). Do not turn of the boiler altogether. By removing all the time schedules, the boiler will still run on frost protection if it needs to.
• Turn off all hot water units by deleting the programme from centralised hot water tanks and switching off the fused spurs on electric point of use units.
  PLEASE FOLLOW ADVICE BELOW ON FLUSHING ON RETURN.
• Turn off all ventilation units, including air handling, kitchen ventilation and WC extract.
• All water fountains with a chilled water element should also be switched off for closure and flushed on reopening.
• We would recommend that all fridges are emptied and turned off with the door left open for ventilation.
• Within the kitchens, all chilled food should be placed into one fridge and all others turned off. Any drinks fridges and vending machines can be turned off completely with the sealed products still in them. All frozen goods should also be placed into one unit and all other units turned off.
• Any IT systems which have an auto start function should be set to a holiday mode, so these do not come on during closure.
• All printers, photocopiers, projectors, whiteboards, monitors and the like should be turned off (once the fan has stopped running).
• If the building uses TV or other display screens for notices, these should be switched off.
• You may wish to consider if you want external lights coming on during the closure period. If you do not, these should be turned off on site. Certainly, older CCTV systems may require some element of external lighting to operate successfully.
• Please ask your site staff to conduct a full walk around on closure checking that all taps are turned off and not dripping, and all windows are fully closed. They should also check that any locally-controlled air conditioning is switched off on the individual room controls.
• If you have a swimming pool, the heating should be turned off and the cover must be put on. Remember to allow enough time to reheat the pool on reopening. Depending on the cover and type of system the ventilation may be possible to be reduced but it is unlikely that it can be safety turned off altogether. It will depend on the water filtering system as to whether the filter pumps need to run or can be set back. With sand filters, a back wash should be performed on closure but should not be required during the shutdown period if there is no bather load. Jacuzzis, saunas and steam rooms should all be shutdown.

On reopening it is important that water hygiene considerations are followed therefore:

• Please run hot water systems at least 24 hours prior to re-opening and ensure that the hot water systems are run to pasteurise (over 60 degrees) the systems before use. All hot and cold water taps should be run for at least 2 mins during this period to ensure that flushing has taken place and temperatures recorded.
• We would advise that all hot water boilers (in staff rooms, kitchens and the like) are switched off on closure and turned back on and flushed in the 24 hours prior to reopening.
• All water fountains with a chilled water element should be flushed on reopening.