Case Study from: Design24 Consulting
Learn how Design24 delivered a full 66-bed residential care home in just 2 hours, cutting design time by 75% with h2x.
Name: Daniel Collins
Role: Director
Company: Design24 Consulting
Location: Shipley, West Yorkshire, UK
Results at a glance:
2 hours to complete the final iteration (vs ~8 hours previously)
75% time saving with a single model for hot and cold services
Standards-compliant outputs (HTM 04-01 and BS EN 806-3), ready for drawing production
See how this was done:
The Background
Design24 Consulting were appointed to design the domestic hot and cold water services for a new 66-bed residential care home, with every bedroom served by an en-suite. Beyond private rooms, the building includes a salon, cafe, and visitor spaces, each with distinct service requirements and usage profiles that add complexity to load assessment and distribution.
From the outset, the project was governed by HTM 04-01 and calculated to BS EN 806-3. To maintain compliance while moving quickly through design gateways, the team selected h2x to model both hot and cold services in a single, standards-driven environment and to produce outputs the drawing team could adopt with minimal additional notes.
The Challenge
Traditional hydraulic workflows can be slow, especially when standards compliance requires workarounds or when multiple iterations are needed as plans evolve. Under typical tools, Design24 estimated around 8 hours of effort for a scheme of this scope, time largely spent on manual steps and reconciling calculations with drawing production.
Moreover, legacy software often struggled with the project's requirements. As Daniel Collins notes, some tools "fail to incorporate the flow rate requirements below 300 loading units", making it harder to achieve accurate results against BS EN 806-3 at early design stages and increasing the risk of late rework.
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The Solution
Using h2x, Design24 drew and calculated both hot and cold water services in the same model, streamlining iteration and removing duplicate effort. The team advanced hydraulic design to RIBA Stage 3, not just Stage 4, so coordination decisions could be made earlier, with fewer surprises downstream.
With h2x's structured outputs, pipework, sizes, and flow rates were issued directly to the drawing production team with only minor annotations. The environment's usability also mattered: "h2x is much more user-friendly; it's easier to draw pipework, update existing models, and most importantly, calculate the required design standard correctly," says Daniel.
The Results
The final iteration of the design was completed within 2 hours, a reduction from an estimated 8 hours using other software, a 6-hour (75%) time saving for the project. Faster modelling enabled more informed Stage 3 decisions, cutting the time normally associated with changes and longhand spreadsheet checks.
Quality improved in tandem with speed. By embedding HTM 04-01 and BS EN 806-3 requirements in the model, Design24 produced drawing-ready outputs that aligned with the project's compliance needs. As Daniel summed up: "In our opinion, h2x is better than other hydraulic software we've used previously... it calculates to the design standard correctly."
h2x: All-In-One Tool for Calculating, Designing, Estimating, and Paperwork
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