Our services

Portfolio audit and multi-year budget

An owner holding thirty buildings is not asking which heat pump to buy. The question is an order of priority: which building already breaches the rules, which one tips over in 2027, which can wait until 2030, and how much to set aside meanwhile. We survey a portfolio in batches, one report format for every building, and deliver a ranking plus a budget consolidated by financial year. Thirty-six residential rental buildings in French-speaking Switzerland were handled this way for an institutional owner. Detail on the French page.

Heating replacement study

This is the core piece of work for an owner. We collect the meter readings and the building data, from a questionnaire or a site visit, then compare the options that are realistic for that particular building: an air-to-water heat pump, a ground-source heat pump on boreholes, district heating, wood, or a hybrid. Each one is set out with its capital cost, its running cost over twenty years, its CO2 and the subsidies it qualifies for, together with the permit route and a programme. We present the report to you or to your condominium meeting.

Heat pumps: sizing, noise and permit

Sizing comes first: the annual heating demand to SIA 380/1, the heat load to SIA 384/201 and domestic hot water to SIA 385/2. SIA is the Swiss society of engineers and architects, whose standards the cantons apply. An oversized machine is the fault we correct most often, because it short-cycles, loses efficiency and makes more noise.

Noise is what actually blocks an outdoor unit. Since 1 November 2024 the determining figure has been the sound power level at 2 °C outside air, the night-time planning value governs, and the assessment point is the middle of the open window of a neighbour's noise-sensitive room — a bathroom or a garage is not one. A re-entrant corner in a façade costs about 6 dB before you start. A hood buys roughly 3 dB, night mode 5 dB and an acoustic screen 6 dB, but combined they do not simply add up: the justification is calculated for the actual configuration. We produce the official justification on form LN-1a and tell you whether the unit needs a permit, a notification or neither.

For eight new houses over a shared underground car park at Trélex, completed in 2026, we sized one 8 kW air-to-water heat pump per house, specified the car park ventilation with carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxide detection, and compared nine tenders. At Orbe a new house has a 12 kW reversible air-to-water unit on R290 propane, with cooling through the floor circuits.

Ventilation and indoor air

In Vaud, cantonal regulations require the energy service's authorisation from 1,000 m³/h of extract air per building, and heat recovery with controlled fresh-air supply becomes compulsory beyond 1,000 m³/h and 500 operating hours a year. For dwellings, SIA 382/5:2021 calls for 30 m³/h of supply air per room and at least 50 m³/h of extract air per dwelling in continuous operation; other building types follow SIA 382/1. We design both extract-only systems and balanced supply-and-extract systems with heat recovery, and we check the acoustics and the ductwork before the tender rather than after the complaint.

Energy compliance and permit applications

In the canton of Vaud a project is submitted through the mise à l'enquête, the public consultation, and CAMAC, the cantonal clearing house, circulates the file to the cantonal departments. We prepare the energy part: the SIA 380/1 calculation and the EN-VD forms, the standard cantonal energy forms. In Fribourg and in the Valais Chablais we prepare the cantonal forms (EN-FR, EN-VS) under each canton's energy act. In Geneva the cantonal energy office, the OCEN, expects a building energy concept, based for an existing building on the IDC index of measured heat consumption. A major renovation, meaning works worth more than half the building's insured value, triggers full compliance of the envelope, which is why the calculation has to be done properly from the start.

Energy certificates, Minergie and subsidies

The CECB is the Swiss building energy certificate, graded A to G and known as the GEAK in the German-speaking cantons; the CECB Plus version adds a costed renovation scenario. We provide both, signed by an accredited expert listed in the official register. We also belong to the Minergie association — the Swiss low-energy building label, with its stricter Minergie-P and Minergie-ECO variants — and take projects through certification.

Subsidies under the Programme Bâtiments have to be applied for before work begins, For a heat pump on a building from before 2000, a plain CECB proves the envelope class; a CECB Plus is required for insulation grants above 10,000 francs. One trap costs owners the entire grant: for measures up to 70 kW no fossil back-up is tolerated, so a small gas boiler kept on just in case disqualifies the heat pump.

Tenders, site supervision and turnkey appointments

We write the specifications, run the tender, compare the offers line by line, then supervise the works, witness commissioning and check the settings. The modular six-classroom school building in the canton of Geneva ran this way, with a 24.3 kW air-to-water heat pump, radiators at 40/35 °C, an 800-litre buffer vessel and BIM construction drawings.

On a turnkey appointment we take the whole sequence — permit, tenders for every trade, programme, site management, handover and the subsidy application — while you keep the decisions and the payments. There is more on our French page about the turnkey project.