When energy bills climb, the default response in most businesses is to look at the big-ticket items. Heat pump retrofits, new boilers, building insulation, solar panels. All of these are worthwhile investments. But before spending tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds on capital projects, it is worth looking at the energy your building is wasting right now through inefficiencies that cost nothing to fix.

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The reason these inefficiencies persist is simple: they are invisible. Unlike a broken heater or a leaking roof, hidden energy waste does not announce itself. The building still works. The staff are still warm. The bills are higher than they should be, but without a benchmark, it is impossible to know how much higher. This guide focuses on practical, low-cost or no-cost actions that any building operator can take this week to reduce energy waste in an industrial building.

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Check Your Thermostat Settings

 

The single most common source of hidden energy waste in an industrial building is a thermostat set higher than necessary. Many warehouses, factories and workshops are heated to 19 to 21 degrees because that is what the previous facility manager set the thermostat to ten years ago and no one has touched it since.

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Industry guidance from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) suggests a minimum workplace temperature of 16 degrees for sedentary work, dropping to 13 degrees for work involving rigorous physical activity. For a typical warehouse or distribution operation, 16 to 18 degrees is comfortable and compliant. Reducing the set point from 21 to 18 degrees can cut heating energy consumption by 15% to 20%.

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This is the cheapest energy saving available. The cost is the time it takes to walk to the thermostat and turn the dial. Yet in many buildings nobody does it because nobody has thought to question the setting.

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• Check the actual temperature being maintained: Walk around the building with a thermometer at different times of day to confirm what temperature is actually being achieved

• Reduce the set point by one degree at a time: Make incremental reductions and ask staff for feedback. Most people cannot detect a one degree change but the energy saving is immediate

• Different zones, different temperatures: Storage areas, machine spaces and office areas often have different optimal temperatures. There is no reason to heat them all to the same level

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Review Your Heating Schedule

 

The second biggest source of hidden waste is heating an empty building. Many industrial heating systems were set up years ago to run from 6am to 6pm Monday to Friday and nobody has reviewed the schedule since. If your shift pattern has changed, if you have moved to four day weeks, or if you have introduced flexible working, your heating schedule may be heating the building when nobody is there.

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Walk through the schedule and ask:

• When does heating start? Most buildings can have heating start an hour later than the schedule currently runs, particularly with optimum start controls that compensate for outside temperature

• When does heating stop? Heating typically runs until the last person leaves. In practice, the building retains heat for 30 to 60 minutes after the heaters stop. Switching off earlier saves energy without any drop in comfort

• What happens at weekends? Many buildings are heated through weekends when they are empty. Switching to frost protection mode (maintaining only enough warmth to prevent freezing) can cut weekend energy use to a tiny fraction of normal levels

• What about bank holidays and shutdowns? These should be automatically programmed into the building management system. In many cases they are not, and the building runs at full heat through Christmas, Easter and summer shutdowns

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Reviewing and updating the heating schedule typically takes an hour and costs nothing. The annual saving for a medium-sized warehouse can run into thousands of pounds.

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Check Your Destratification Fans

 

If your warm air heated industrial building has destratification fans installed, are they actually working? More importantly, are they switched on and set to run when they need to?

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Destratification fans are designed to recover warm air from ceiling level and push it back to floor level. They are essential for all warm air heating systems. Without them, warm air rises and pools at the ceiling while the floor zone stays cold, the heater runs longer to compensate and energy is wasted. But destrat fans only work if they are running and set correctly.

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Common problems include destrat fans that have been switched off because someone thought they were creating draughts, fans set to run only during occupied hours when they should be running continuously through the heating season, and fans that have failed and not been replaced because nobody noticed. In each case the building is losing significant heating efficiency.

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If your building does not have destratification fans and you are heating it with warm air, this is one of the highest-payback investments available in industrial heating. The Hadar DSF destratification fan reduces heating costs by up to 30% in buildings with high stratification, with payback typically inside a single heating season.

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Close the Doors

 

If your building has loading bay doors, personnel doors or roller shutter doors that are left open longer than necessary, you are losing heat continuously throughout the working day. This is one of the most preventable forms of energy waste and it costs nothing to address operationally.

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• Train staff to close doors: Make door discipline part of the standard operating procedure for the loading bay and dispatch area. A simple sign at each door reminding staff to close them when not in active use can significantly reduce heat loss

• Check door seals: Door seals deteriorate over time. A loading door that does not seal properly when closed leaks heat continuously even when the door is shut. Replacing seals is inexpensive and dramatic in its impact

• Check personnel doors: Pedestrian access doors propped open with a brick because the auto-closer is broken are a common sight in industrial buildings. Fixing the closer costs little and stops a continuous heat leak

• Audit your strip curtains: If you have PVC strip curtains across doorways, are they intact? Strip curtains get damaged over time and individual strips often go missing. A complete set is much more effective than one with gaps

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For loading bays in regular use, an industrial air curtain like the Sonniger Guard Pro dramatically reduces heat loss without obstructing vehicle movement. We have written a full guide on why loading doors destroy warehouse heating efficiency and how to fix it.

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Check Your Air Curtain Controls

 

If your building already has air curtains, are they configured correctly?

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Air curtains are most effective when they are linked to the door they are protecting and run only when the door is open. A correctly configured air curtain switches on automatically as the door opens and switches off when it closes. An incorrectly configured air curtain might run continuously regardless of door state, wasting electricity and creating unnecessary noise. Or it might not run at all because the door switch has failed or the controls have been overridden.

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Walk to each air curtain in the building and check:

• Is it running when the door opens? If not, the door switch or controls have failed

• Is it running when the door is closed? If yes, it is wasting electricity

• Is the heat element switched on appropriately? Many air curtains have an unheated mode for summer. Make sure heated air curtains are heating in winter and not in summer

• Is the fan speed set correctly? Too low and the curtain does not seal the opening. Too high and it creates draughts and wastes energy

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Find Your Ghost Heating

 

Ghost heating is energy being used to heat areas of the building that are not occupied. Common examples include:

• Unused storage areas: Mezzanines, mezzanine offices and overflow storage spaces that are heated to the same temperature as the main occupied areas. These often need only frost protection

• Plant rooms and corridors: Service areas that are heated because they share air with the main space, when they could be physically separated and unheated

• Empty bays: Sections of the building that are not currently in use but are still being heated to occupied levels because the heating is not zoned

• Out-of-hours spaces: Areas that are only used occasionally but are heated continuously because the controls cannot differentiate

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The fix is usually a combination of zoning the heating controls and either physically separating unused areas or simply switching off the heaters that serve them. Often this can be done within the existing heating system at no capital cost.

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Check the Filters and the Heater

 

Heating equipment that is dirty, blocked or out of service works harder and burns more fuel to deliver the same heat output.

• Air filters: Blocked or dirty filters on warm air heaters reduce airflow, forcing the heater to run longer to deliver the same heat. Replacing filters is cheap and quick

• Burner inspection: A gas burner that is not properly tuned burns more fuel than necessary. An annual service that includes a combustion analysis ensures the burner is operating at its rated efficiency

• Heat exchanger condition: A heat exchanger that is dirty or corroded transfers heat less efficiently. Annual servicing should include cleaning

• Flue check: A blocked or partially blocked flue forces the burner to work against back pressure, reducing efficiency and creating safety risks

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Annual servicing of heating equipment is a regulatory requirement for commercial gas appliances, but the energy efficiency benefits are often overlooked. A properly serviced heating system can use 5% to 10% less fuel than one that has been neglected.

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When Quick Fixes Are Not Enough

 

The actions above will reduce energy waste in any industrial building. But if your heating equipment is genuinely old, inefficient or nearing end of life, no amount of operational improvement will turn it into a modern high-efficiency system. There comes a point where the right answer is to replace.

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Modern condensing warm air heaters like the Apen LKN achieve up to 109% seasonal efficiency, compared to 70% to 80% for the non-condensing units they typically replace. If your current heater is more than 15 years old, fuel cost alone usually justifies replacement on payback grounds.

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For buildings where the existing heater is in a purpose-built enclosure and a standard replacement will not fit, the Hadar Replicant can be built to the same dimensions as the obsolete unit with modern high-efficiency components inside. This avoids the cost and disruption of rebuilding enclosures, ductwork and flue routes.

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For broader system upgrades, the Hadar Vortex combines heating, ventilation and cooling in a single unit, replacing multiple older systems with one modern installation.

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Where to Start

 

The quick fixes in this article can be implemented in a single afternoon by anyone with access to the building and the heating controls:

• Reduce thermostat set point by one degree

• Review and update the heating schedule

• Switch on and check destratification fans

• Audit door operations and seals

• Check air curtain controls

• Identify and eliminate ghost heating

• Service the heating equipment

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These steps typically reduce industrial heating energy consumption by 20% to 30% with no capital investment. They should always be the first step in any energy efficiency programme, before larger investments are considered.

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If you want an independent assessment of where energy waste is happening in your building and what the highest-impact fixes would be, contact Hadar Industries today for a free site survey. We will walk the building with you, identify the hidden waste and recommend the right combination of quick fixes and longer-term upgrades.