British Gas Hive Heating - your thoughts/experiences

iamlucky18

I'm thinking of getting BG Hive heating installed, but before I do I would like to get your thoughts and experiences of the system or similar devices.

How useful are you finding it and have you noticed and reductions in your energy bills? What problems have you experienced? Did you install it yourself?

Thanks.

Raxiel

I don't have a hive, but I do have a Wave, the Worcester equivalent.

Overall I like it, the ability to remotely control the heating and hot water preheat is useful. If I know my wife has been out all day and the house is cold, I can turn it up when I leave work and it'll be warm by the time I get back. Or if I wake up early one day before the scheduled 'wake up' time I can warm the house from under the duvet before I get up.

Home presence is good too, if you don't have a predictable schedule you can use to set timers. Hive didn't have it at the time I got the Wave but I think it's been added since. That feature means the heating turns off when you leave and back on when you come in (or to be precise, when smartphones with the control app leave and return the vicinity of the house). It's not 100% though, ours sometimes misses my wife leaving and remains on, but after some investigation I think that's because the Wave app uses network location to determine if you're in, and either Giffgaff or the O2 network it runs on often gets her location wrong.

We did see a significant (£500) reduction in our energy bill last year, but that was down to a combination of the new boiler fitted with the Wave, loft insulation and a good tariff. Its hard to say how much of that exactly was down to the Wave, but I do think it helped, both with the home presence detection (Wifey often left the house after me and forgot to turn the old system off, now even if HPD messes up I can still remotely turn it down), and because the Wave is able to integrate with a compatible boiler to operate in a continuous flow mode that saves a bit of energy by keeping it condensing for longer. I've no Idea if Hive has that feature, although I know some other smart thermostats have 'Opentherm' support which I believe can do the same thing on an Opentherm compatible boiler, you'd have to speak to an installer about that though.

The wave needs hard wiring to the boiler, we just used the existing thermostat wires. I think Hive is a bit more flexible with a module attached to the boiler, another to the router and a wireless control (based on my parents setup which is pre-Hive but now runs Hive software).

System

Manufacturers will claim savings on usage, not bills, of up to 40%. The 40% figure is taken from research carried out by Salford University and is based on putting heating controls into a 3 bed home which previously had nothing. Evidence given to the HoCs Science and Technology averaged out Hive usage savings as between 10 to 15% depending on what was in the property already.

iamlucky18

Lol @ Salford Uni. They sure do carry out flawed research sometimes. I don't know whether to buy the Hive outright or do the deal under my BG home care cover where I can get it for £10/month. But I don't want to pay that and end up only saving a similar amount only in heating bills, there will be no benefit
Yes there other advantages to the system, but it's the savings that I'm more interested in.

System

I should have added that I have full zoning and over the past three years my gas usage has reduced by c.18%. Clearly, heating controls do nothing for standing charges or VAT.

iamlucky18

How easy was it to set up zoning? Am I right in saying that's where you are able to control the heating of individual rooms?

Cardew

iamlucky18 wrote: »

How easy was it to set up zoning? Am I right in saying that's where you are able to control the heating of individual rooms?

Essentially the systems work by having remote controlled TRVs(Thermostatic Radiator valves)

Personally I think such a system is far better(albeit more expensive) than Hive

iamlucky18

Ah. I might consider zoning in that case. Thanks for the info.

System

iamlucky18 wrote: »

Ah. I might consider zoning in that case. Thanks for the info.

Have a look at Evohome. The basic controller will do everything that Hive will do and more. You can run the controller without TRVs - not ideal but it works.

Nebulous2

I bought the first generation Hive with a new boiler. I'm saving a lot of money on heating, but that's mainly the modern condensing boiler.

Our old system did not have a thermostat and had a TRV on each radiator. It worked, kept the whole house at the temperature we wanted by setting individual valves, and we were used to it.

The new system has a big heater without a valve in the lounge, with a thermostat. If there is a lot of activity in the lounge or we have been cooking and have left the kitchen door open the lounge rarely drops to a temperature which switches on the boiler. The bedrooms then are not hot enough. People fiddle with individual controls on their heaters or turn up the thermostat in the lounge with the app. All of this means there is much more interference than there used to be.

On a plus side it is very controllable. It is much easier to set up different timings for different days on a computer than pushing buttons on a thermostat. It is also very useful coming home from holiday to heat the house for a few hours before we get there. Or going out for the day, checking the temperature and deciding whether to boost it for an hour on the way home.

We don't use the app to switch it off/ on automatically as we leave home or before we return.

All-in-all a useful gimmick, but not a lifechanger. Very few things are though, are they?

anotheruser

I don't think it'll ever really take off.

My heating/hot water comes on for a few hours in the morning and a few hours in the evening every day during the colder months.
If I want it on during the day, I use the boiler controller to "+1 hour" or "advance" (to the next program (programme?)).

Why I would want to bother myself playing around with it before leaving work I don't know. Plus, what happens if I get stuck in loads of traffic? Then it's been on wasting time, causing me road rage because I know I can't turn it off (as I'll be at the wheel).

Good for some, but it'll either never really take off, or will take over 10 years to gain any sort of momentum.