Getting rid of Hive system?

Nebulous2

Do you have a combi or a separate hotwater tank? It may be that your water and heating are on separate schedules, which could be why your boiler is coming on when you dont expect it to.

One way to know is to look at the white box beside the boiler. Does it have two green lights, one for heating and another for water or just one.

What about the thermostat, is it an older white one or a newer silvery looking one?

A hub is available for £67.88 on Amazon. It would probably be cheaper to buy and register it for yourself, than to pay a plumber to take it all out and put in a different controller.

The whole lot is £250 installed, so getting it for £68 is a good deal I'd say.

abssorb

IvyFlood wrote: »

... despite setting a programme, the boiler just does what it wants, sometimes our boiler is red hot in the middle of the night and comes on at random times when we haven't set it to.

We have a Nest, which is probably very similar.
When you first activate these systems, they try to learn how your house works, to be "smart".

So if you want the house warm at 8am, rather that putting in a time when you want the heating to come on, you tell it 8am and let it work out when to start firing the boiler. But it doesn't know how efficient your house is, so it puts the heat on really early and measures how long it takes to get to the temperature you want.

Then it will slowly adjust the start time as the days go by. But if you fiddle with it, it will start over again.

In theory this feature means that when summer turns to winter, the start time will adjust automatically. If your house is very well insulated this might work. We found in practise (in an old house) that it just meant the heating came on a 4am every morning.

It was ridiculous, so I disabled that feature and we use it as a programmable thermostat. I.e. we set the start / end times of the temps we want.
I had to do a lot of research and calls to tech support as the user manuals for the Nest were awful.


Random night-time firing.
On the Nest this drove us nuts, I was even rushing down when we heard the boiler firing and putting a multimeter on the control terminals, because there were no lights showing on the nest or its control box.

Turns out it's a feature popular in the USA market called "Bacteria control", which is enabled by default. The purpose of this is to kill all the Legionella in the water in the hot water tank :wall:, and it fired the boiler in the small hours of the morning every night to get it above 60degC.

This feature was really hidden. But once we identified and disabled it, we were back to peaceful nights.
I'll bet the Hive has something similar if it's coming on at crazy times of the night.

rhysadams

I've not had any issues with my Hive. I did when I tried to use Alexa with it, but general use and app its been quite good. Maybe you have a faulty unit?

tempus_fugit

abssorb wrote: »

We have a Nest, which is probably very similar.
When you first activate these systems, they try to learn how your house works, to be "smart".

So if you want the house warm at 8am, rather that putting in a time when you want the heating to come on, you tell it 8am and let it work out when to start firing the boiler. But it doesn't know how efficient your house is, so it puts the heat on really early and measures how long it takes to get to the temperature you want.

Then it will slowly adjust the start time as the days go by. But if you fiddle with it, it will start over again.

In theory this feature means that when summer turns to winter, the start time will adjust automatically. If your house is very well insulated this might work. We found in practise (in an old house) that it just meant the heating came on a 4am every morning.

It was ridiculous, so I disabled that feature and we use it as a programmable thermostat. I.e. we set the start / end times of the temps we want.
I had to do a lot of research and calls to tech support as the user manuals for the Nest were awful.


Random night-time firing.
On the Nest this drove us nuts, I was even rushing down when we heard the boiler firing and putting a multimeter on the control terminals, because there were no lights showing on the nest or its control box.

Turns out it's a feature popular in the USA market called "Bacteria control", which is enabled by default. The purpose of this is to kill all the Legionella in the water in the hot water tank :wall:, and it fired the boiler in the small hours of the morning every night to get it above 60degC.

This feature was really hidden. But once we identified and disabled it, we were back to peaceful nights.
I'll bet the Hive has something similar if it's coming on at crazy times of the night.

Yeah, we had the same experience with our Nest and the boiler coming on early was a pain, as the boiler was beneath the bedroom so it woke us up. It worked great as a standard programmable thermostat though.

When we moved house it was to one with a two-zone system so I got the Hive, as it did a two-zone setup cheaper than Nest. It works great but it does need the hub to work properly though. It doesn’t have learning capabilities though. so we didn’t have the same problems as we had with the Nest.

I wouldn't do without my Hive system. I'm currently on holiday and can control it, see the temperatures and set it to holiday mode from 1500 miles away.

DCFC79

IvyFlood wrote: »

Because its so temperamental. The previous owners of the house we bought left us their hub, but we can't simply deregister it and set up our own account, no we have to buy a brand new hub = con. We are using it anyway (without phone control) and despite setting a programme, the boiler just does what it wants, sometimes our boiler is red hot in the middle of the night and comes on at random times when we haven't set it to.


The thermostat simply doesn't work on its own without the hub, its designed to work with the hub, which is no good. I think its relying too much on technology for technologies sake. I want rid and be able to control the heating in the old fashioned way!

Yes I see why you want to get rid of it.

Thats a con you cant deregister the previous owners from the hub.

Gloomendoom

By the time a new time and thermostat has been bought, it would be cheaper to buy a new Hive hub which would enable the system to be set up to work properly.

We have one and it's an excellent piece of kit.

Nebulous2

DCFC79 wrote: »

Yes I see why you want to get rid of it.

Thats a con you cant deregister the previous owners from the hub.

They're supposed to take it with them.

abssorb

During house sale, conveyancing asks legally binding questions about the condition of the heating and some solicitors will be detailed enough to ask about the thermostat. If Hive's advice is to take it with them and say nothing about leaving the heating functional, then that's quite dodgy.

Nebulous2

abssorb wrote: »

During house sale, conveyancing asks legally binding questions about the condition of the heating and some solicitors will be detailed enough to ask about the thermostat. If Hive's advice is to take it with them and say nothing about leaving the heating functional, then that's quite dodgy.

Did you read the link I posted?



The heating is still functional. They specify that you need to leave the thermostat, as it is an integral part of the heating system. It just doesn't have the smart features / app enabled. It does appear they are trying to end up with two customers instead of one, however.

Gloomendoom

As a proportion of the purchase price of most houses, the cost of a new hub is negligible.

If I ever sell my house, I'll just chuck one in with the sale and take my old with me.