Spruce Survey & Design Tool: How the Installer Workflow Works
A good heat pump design starts with good information about the property.
Traditionally, that can mean measuring a house on site, drawing a floor plan, taking photographs and notes, then returning to the office and entering much of the same information again into heat loss calculations, design software and customer documents.
The Spruce Survey & Design tool is designed to connect those stages.
Property information collected during the survey becomes the basis of the room-by-room heat loss calculation and can then continue into the system design, reports and wider proposal workflow. Spruce currently supports surveys from existing floor plans, uploaded plans, LiDAR scanning and manual measurement. (Spruce)
For heat pump installers, the important point is not simply that the calculation is quicker. It is that the survey and design can form one continuous workflow.
If you are looking for a broader introduction to the platform, see our guide to Spruce heat pump design software. This page looks specifically at how the Survey & Design workflow fits together.
THE WORKFLOW
The Spruce Survey-to-Design Workflow
At its simplest, the process looks like this:
Property / Job → Survey → Building Information → Room-by-Room Heat Loss → System Design → Design Reports and Proposal
The same project information can move through each stage rather than being repeatedly copied between handwritten survey sheets, spreadsheets and separate design programs.
That matters because reducing duplicate data entry is not just about saving time. Every time measurements, U-values, room names or heating loads are manually transferred between systems there is another opportunity for information to be missed or entered incorrectly.
Spruce has deliberately built Survey & Design around carrying the project information forward through the workflow. (Spruce)
GETTING STARTED
How Can a Property Survey Be Started in Spruce?
There is no single way every property has to be surveyed. The appropriate starting point depends on the building and the information already available.
Existing floor plans
For some existing properties there may already be a usable floor plan available. This can provide a starting point for the property geometry, although dimensions and other information still need to be checked where their accuracy affects the design.
LiDAR survey
Compatible iPhones and iPads can use LiDAR to capture room geometry. Walls, doors and windows can be recorded as the surveyor moves through the property, with photographs and notes added alongside the survey information. This can remove much of the traditional process of measuring every room and then drawing the property again later.
Manual measurement
LiDAR is not essential. A property can still be surveyed using manual measurements or a laser measure, with the information entered into the Spruce workflow.
Architectural plans
For new builds and suitable renovation projects, the design can begin from architectural or floor-plan information rather than an existing building survey. Spruce supports both retrofit and new-build workflows and allows designs to be developed from floor plans as well as measurements collected on site. (Spruce)
The important distinction is that the drawing is only the geometry. A heat loss calculation still needs appropriate information about the building fabric, glazing, ventilation and intended use of the property.
PROPERTY INFORMATION
Building the Property Information
Once the rooms and geometry are established, the survey needs enough information to describe how the building loses heat. That can include:
- room dimensions and ceiling heights
- external walls
- floors and roofs
- windows and external doors
- construction types and appropriate U-values
- ventilation characteristics
- chimneys, extract systems and other relevant air-change information
Spruce’s heat loss workflow uses this information to calculate fabric and ventilation losses for individual rooms. Its own survey guidance also identifies construction, windows, doors, ventilation and existing emitters as key survey inputs. (Spruce)
This is where the quality of the original survey becomes important. A digital survey can be complete from a software point of view while still containing an uncertain construction assumption or missing technical information.
Software can perform the calculation very quickly. It cannot determine that an incorrect input is actually correct.
EXISTING SYSTEM
Recording the Existing Heating System
For retrofit work, understanding the building is only one half of the survey. The existing heating system also needs to be considered. That can include existing:
- radiators
- towel rails
- underfloor heating
- heating zones
- pipework
- cylinder and plant
- controls
The exact information required depends on the project and how much of the existing system is being retained.
There is no need to reproduce a complete survey checklist here. We have a separate Heat Pump Survey Checklist for Installers covering the information worth collecting before leaving site.
The important point within Spruce is that existing emitter and system information can form part of the same project record that will later be used during design.
HEAT LOSS
From Survey Information to Room-by-Room Heat Loss
Once the building geometry and technical information have been entered, Spruce can calculate the heating requirement room by room.
The calculation considers heat escaping through the building fabric together with ventilation losses under the chosen design conditions.
This produces more than a single whole-house figure. Each room has its own heating requirement.
That distinction matters because the whole-property heat loss helps inform heat pump sizing, while the individual room loads help determine whether each room’s radiators or underfloor heating can deliver enough heat at the proposed system temperature.
Spruce describes the room-by-room heat loss as the link between the building survey and subsequent emitter and system design. (Spruce)
We cover the calculation stage in more detail in our separate Spruce Heat Loss Calculator guide.
SYSTEM DESIGN
Moving From Heat Loss Into System Design
This is where Survey & Design becomes more useful than treating heat loss as an isolated calculation.
Completing the heat loss does not complete the heat pump design. The calculated heating demand now needs to be turned into a system that can actually deliver it.
Depending on the project, that can include decisions around:
- design flow temperature
- radiator or emitter requirements
- underfloor heating performance
- heat pump selection
- domestic hot water requirements
- cylinder selection
- pipe sizing
- hydraulic arrangement
- controls
- equipment selection
Spruce carries information forward from the survey and heat loss stages into its system-design workflow rather than requiring the designer to start again with another set of software.
Its current Survey & Design platform also includes pipework and drawing tools alongside heat loss, equipment design and report generation. (Spruce)
That continuity is one of the most useful parts of the workflow.
WHY IT MATTERS
Why Using the Same Project Data Matters
Consider a traditional process.
An engineer surveys the house and records the information. Someone enters those measurements into a heat loss spreadsheet. The results are transferred into another tool to size radiators. Heat pump information is added to a quotation. The same technical information is then entered again into reports and project paperwork.
Even when every individual system works perfectly, the process itself creates work.
A connected workflow changes that. The survey information becomes the heat loss input. The heat loss becomes part of the design. The design information can then feed reports and customer proposals.
Spruce currently generates proposal information and technical reports from the survey and system design data already held against the job. (Spruce)
That is where much of the time saving comes from: not repeatedly recreating the same job.
TEAM STRUCTURE
Can One Person Survey and Another Person Complete the Design?
Yes — and this is particularly interesting for growing heat pump businesses.
The person visiting the property does not necessarily have to be the person sitting at a desk completing the technical design.
Spruce currently allows businesses to invite surveyors or designers into jobs and control which parts of the project they can access. (Spruce)
That creates several possible workflows. A company might have:
Surveyor → Designer → Installation Team
Or, in a smaller business:
Installer → External Designer → Installer
The installer can remain responsible for the customer relationship and property survey while another person completes the office-based design work.
That is particularly useful when the limitation within the business is no longer the number of installations it can physically complete, but the amount of design time available between them.
DESIGN-READY
When Is a Spruce Survey Actually Ready for Design?
A finished survey is not necessarily a design-ready survey.
Before progressing, the designer needs enough reliable information to understand the property and make justified technical decisions. For example, there may still be uncertainty about:
- wall or floor construction
- insulation
- an inaccessible roof area
- glazing
- existing pipe sizes
- underfloor heating
- proposed plant locations
- an unusual room or extension
The correct response is not simply to fill every unknown field with an assumption so that the software will continue. Sometimes assumptions are reasonable and can be documented. Sometimes more information is required.
That principle applies whether the survey was completed using LiDAR, an architectural plan or a tape measure.
Good software can make a good survey much faster to work with. It cannot turn poor input information into a reliable design.
OUTPUTS
What Comes Out of the Survey & Design Workflow?
The exact outputs depend on the project and how much of the Spruce platform is being used. Within the wider workflow, Spruce currently supports outputs covering areas such as:
- room-by-room heat loss
- system design
- proposed heat pump and cylinder
- emitters
- hot-water calculations
- pipework and drawings
- heat loss reports
- system-design reports
- customer proposals
Spruce’s proposal system can then use information already generated during the survey and design rather than requiring the technical specification to be created again from scratch. (Spruce)
For an installer, that means the survey is not simply a data-gathering exercise. It becomes the starting point for the rest of the technical workflow.
THE BOTTOM LINE
Where Spruce Saves Time — and Where the Work Remains
Spruce addresses one of the biggest inefficiencies in traditional heat pump design: repeatedly transferring information from one system to another.
It can make surveying faster, automate calculations, reuse project information and generate documentation from the work already completed.
But there is an important distinction. Making the design process faster is not the same as removing the design work. Someone still needs to:
- review the survey
- question uncertain inputs
- understand the heat loss
- decide on appropriate design temperatures
- assess emitters
- select suitable equipment
- consider hydraulics and pipework
- check whether the proposed system makes sense as a complete design
For an installer completing a few projects, that may be perfectly manageable. As the number of enquiries and installations grows, however, the bottleneck can move from software to capacity.
And that is where the same collaborative Spruce workflow becomes useful in a different way.
FOR INSTALLERS
Need Extra Design Capacity Inside Spruce?
Heat Loss Hub provides independent heat pump design support for installers, including businesses already using Spruce.
You can retain the customer relationship and site work while we support the office-based technical workload behind the project. That can range from individual jobs when you’re busy through to a more regular outsourced design workflow.
Tell us how you currently survey and design your heat pump projects and where the workload is building up. We can look at where Heat Loss Hub could fit into the process without forcing you to change the way you work.