British Gas Hive anyone? 27 January 2014 at 1:57PM in Green & ethical MoneySaving 22 replies 15.4K views

mongmoney

Good afternoon all, I'm thinking of having Hive installed for the future benefits of not heating the house when I stay out.
Anyone already got it and can give me the inside info? Thanks in anticipation.
Mongy

ChopperST

Had it for the last month and its an excellent bit of kit.

We wanted a wireless thermostat but for the price we thought we may as well have the Hive system installed.

Can only comment on the iphone app but its well designed and easy to work through. Takes 5 - 10 seconds to ping your hub and your current system status and you can then see the temperature of your house and system status. Turning the heating up is instantaneous, even over 3G and you get a flame in the corner of the app to tell you the boiler has powered on. We found the web portal easier for setting the schedules and the app for more minor adjustments.

Ken68

http://www.britishgas.co.uk/products-and-services/hive-active-heating.html


Had to look that up MM. Why not a timer?


Discussed here.....http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=4869769

rochja

The only advantage I see to hive is the ability to crank the heat up half an hour before you get home - when you are probably too busy driving the car to bother. I settle for a cheap digital thermostat with 5 individually configurable time zones per day. If I were to get home to a cold house I would trigger the heating and go out for a swift half - or perhaps go and surf with llamas

The_Green_Hornet

There are lot of these so called clever heating systems coming on to the market at the moment. As well as Hive Active Heating you have Tado which tracks where you are using your smartphone location and adjusts the heating accordingly. Then there is Honeywell Evo Home and Neo Heatmiser which lets you heat separate zones within your house, and finally there is Nest which was designed by ex-Apple employees so will look great and no doubt cost a fortune.

Whether any of them will save you the money they claim they can (I do worry about "up to £x" statements) is open debate but I think I will stick with manually turning down the thermostat when I go out and then putting it up again when I return.

Buzby

I had it installed and it worked for 8 hours. Then thermostat refused to connect to the Hive Hub, meaning I have to manually turn off and on, and it goes full pelt until turned off.

Helpdesk offered a WiFi booster - 8 days later and still waiting.

Not happy.

leehal

I have had it since early January.

Works brilliantly, much better than a standard timer as if you are running late, going out for the night or going away you can turn your heating off and remotely activate it so that the house is warm by the time you get home.

I don't think it will take long to pay for itself. We often used to go out on a night and just leave the heating on timed when no one was in, essentially heating the house when we didn't need to.

Thumbs up from me.

zeupater

leehal wrote: »

I have had it since early January.

Works brilliantly, much better than a standard timer as if you are running late, going out for the night or going away you can turn your heating off and remotely activate it so that the house is warm by the time you get home.

I don't think it will take long to pay for itself. We often used to go out on a night and just leave the heating on timed when no one was in, essentially heating the house when we didn't need to.

Thumbs up from me.

Hi

Although I can understand a small benefit (depending on time pattern) if you are running late returning home, I fail to follow why the logic on how the unit would provide any benefit when going out .... it's pretty simple to either switch the heating controls to off or turn the thermostat down before leaving the house, so it's all really down to memory and/or normal exit practices .... ie - cat out, windows&doors closed, money, cards, keys, car keys, shoes, coat, turn heating down, house alarm, lights, lock door - enjoy yourself .... If you've got such a bad memory to regularly forget to turn the heating down that you need a method of remote rectification, the question which should be asked is whether you closed the rear windows and put the cat out and how you could achieve that remotely ....

I'm all for home automation, but automating heating controls, something which is already automated (and has been for decades) is just an unnecessary expense ....

HTH
Z

ChopperST

I guess it all depends on routine.

If you have a predictable routine then it may not be for you but if you have a lifestyle where you will be arriving home earlier / later than planned on a regular basis as I do in my job it is a fantastic bit of kit.

We are hoping that our current house is where we intend to stay forever and I personally have no doubt that I will recoup the installation cost over the period we stay in the house for. I have retrofitted a light and power automation system too which runs alongside.

WestonDave

Whilst I can see this sort of thing becoming more and more common with some benefits, its not going to help me enough to justify the expense. Its also still a pretty dumb system - i.e. lacking soft inteligence.

Its all well and good being able to remotely set the temperature etc, but what you really want to be able to do (either remotely or on site) is control your heating so it factors in things such as house temperature at present, outside temperature (and therefore loss to cold window surfaces perhaps) and learns to be able to get the house to say 18C at 7am if that's what you want it to be. Most current systems (give or take a degree of anticipation) generally do nothing until 7am and then switch it on so you end up trying to manually think that if you want the house at 18C when you get up you need to put the heating on half an hour earlier because on average that is what's needed. However on some days its warmer so you waste energy by having a higher temperature from earlier, and other days you still get up cold.

So a system which can work out that if the outside temperature is say -1C the existing ambient temperature is 10C and therefore from experience it will take roughly 1 hour to get to 18C, and maybe even turn up or down its output if its likely to over or undershoot, and continue to learn from experience is more of a holy grail than a remotely operated simple thermostat.

ChopperST

WestonDave wrote: »

Whilst I can see this sort of thing becoming more and more common with some benefits, its not going to help me enough to justify the expense. Its also still a pretty dumb system - i.e. lacking soft inteligence.

Its all well and good being able to remotely set the temperature etc, but what you really want to be able to do (either remotely or on site) is control your heating so it factors in things such as house temperature at present, outside temperature (and therefore loss to cold window surfaces perhaps) and learns to be able to get the house to say 18C at 7am if that's what you want it to be. Most current systems (give or take a degree of anticipation) generally do nothing until 7am and then switch it on so you end up trying to manually think that if you want the house at 18C when you get up you need to put the heating on half an hour earlier because on average that is what's needed. However on some days its warmer so you waste energy by having a higher temperature from earlier, and other days you still get up cold.

So a system which can work out that if the outside temperature is say -1C the existing ambient temperature is 10C and therefore from experience it will take roughly 1 hour to get to 18C, and maybe even turn up or down its output if its likely to over or undershoot, and continue to learn from experience is more of a holy grail than a remotely operated simple thermostat.

Sounds like a Dragon's Den opportunity?

I'm unsure as to the capabilities of the hub but one would assume there is the capacity to upgrade the firmware to account for this.

Fortunately as I live in a new build and well insulated property it doesn't take long to reach temperature. The system does tell you the outside temperature at your location so it may be a future upgrade.