About HeatLens

A family mission for warmer, healthier homes

HeatLens was founded in Edinburgh by Daniel and Michelle Coakley: a building energy engineer and a children's nurse who have both seen what a cold, damp home costs a family.

Our story

Why we started HeatLens

Daniel has spent his career in building energy, in research, industry and consultancy. Michelle has spent hers caring for children with complex breathing conditions in their own homes across Lothian. Between us, we kept seeing the same problem from two sides.

Through Michelle's work we have seen how cold, damp and poor air quality at home affect children's health, and how much depends on a family being able to heat their home properly. Closer to home, members of our own family have lived with fuel poverty. That is why this matters so much to us.

When we retrofitted our own 1970s Edinburgh home, the heat pump quotes we received ranged from 5 to 14 kW for the same house. If a building energy engineer found it hard to know which answer to trust, most households have little chance. HeatLens exists to make those decisions clear, evidenced and affordable.

We are building it for our children's generation, who will grow up in the homes we retrofit today, and we want it to be available to the people who could benefit most.

Warm homes are a health issue

Cold, damp homes affect breathing, sleep and wellbeing, most of all for children, older people and anyone living with a long-term condition.

Every number should be explainable

Each figure in HeatLens shows where it came from and how confident we are in it, so homeowners, installers and landlords can check it for themselves.

Free where it matters most

HeatLens is free for individual homeowners, research and education, charities and social enterprises.

The team

Meet the founders

Building physics and clinical care, brought together to help people live in warmer, healthier homes.

Dr Daniel Coakley

Founder

PhD, MBA, CEng, MCIBSE, MASHRAE

Daniel is a chartered building services engineer who has worked on energy use, comfort and air quality in buildings throughout his career. He designed and built HeatLens, including its heat loss engine, AI document reading, retrofit scenarios and tariff models.

PhD from NUI Galway on calibrating detailed building energy simulation models
Marie Curie Research Fellow and lecturer at NUI Galway, then senior research engineer at Mitsubishi Electric R&D Centre Europe
Currently Sustainability Manager for Lloyds Banking Group, leading their Net Zero Energy and Carbon target delivery across their UK office and retail portfolio
Has run Building Energy Consultants Ltd, an independent building energy consultancy, since 2014
Executive MBA from the University of Edinburgh Business School
Took his own 1970s Edinburgh home from EPC D to A with insulation, a heat pump, solar PV and battery storage

danielcoakley.com LinkedIn

Michelle Coakley

Co-founder, Health and Housing Advisor

Community children's nurse manager, NHS Lothian

Michelle is a nurse manager in community children's nursing with NHS Lothian, specialising in children with complex respiratory conditions. She brings the clinical and human side to HeatLens, making sure what we build reflects the realities of the families it is meant to help.

Cares for children with complex respiratory needs at home, including children on long-term home ventilation
Experience supporting older people and people with physical and intellectual disabilities
Works alongside councils and housing associations as an advocate for patients and their families
Clinical nursing research experience

What we built

Right-sizing heat pumps for the UK retrofit, end to end

HeatLens turns the slow, spreadsheet-heavy work of heat pump design into a single, guided workflow. Upload an EPC certificate, a floor plan or a site photo and our AI assistant extracts the fabric, areas and U-values, confidence-scored, for you to review. From there, room-by-room heat loss recalculates live under SAP 10.2 and EN12831 conventions using UK design temperatures, so you can see exactly where every watt is lost and why.

The platform checks existing radiators against low flow temperatures, generates retrofit scenarios with capex, SCOP and running-cost comparisons, models heat pump makes and models against flat, Time of Use and agile tariffs, and produces client-friendly summaries and detailed installer packs. Every assumption stays visible, so you can always see how a number was reached.

HeatLens is built for the people who carry the risk and the responsibility of a retrofit: homeowners who need to trust the decision, designers and assessors who must defend their numbers, installers who have to fit it right first time, housing providers planning at scale, and the universities and training providers teaching the next generation.

Defensible calculations

SAP 10.2 & EN12831, UK design temperatures, full breakdowns.

AI-assisted ingestion

EPCs and floor plans parsed, confidence-scored, human-reviewed.

Installer-ready reports

Emitter schedules and supporting evidence for your MCS paperwork.

Every assumption visible

Open workings, so you can always see how a number was reached.