Hive offer

badger09

We had basic Hive thermostat installed with new System boiler in Sept 2021 & migrated to Octopus from Avro in Oct 2021. We don’t have any smart TRVs & I’m sure it’s not perfect, but I’m happy with the savings I’ve been able to make. 

Yesterday got email from Hive saying they’ve upgraded my thermostat with a month’s free trial of Hive Plus. No hidden automatic payments at the end. The normal cost is £39.90 pa but I’m not sure there would be much benefit. 

Does anyone use Hive Plus? Has it helped you save money?

Bendo

Hive is awful. Can't see how you could save a penny with Hive plus.

northernsparky

I’ve used my Hive system for about a year now- no problems whatsoever, and the ability to control the central heating or hot water via the hive app comes in useful at times. I don’t see any advantage in using smart TRV’s , and agree with @Bendo that paying for hive plus is a total waste of money 

Shedman

Hive Heating Plus adds some additional slightly interesting information, eg weekly and monthly data,  in addition to the daily data (when you click the graph image at top right when you're on the Thermostat page of the app) but, given this data is only based on the length of time when the thermostat has called for heat from the CH and ignores when the boiler is firing for HW only, then it's of somewhat limited usefulness (certainly not any real indication of actual kWh usage) apart from a sort of comparison week on week or month on month (if you're a bit of a nerd like me 😅)

Not worth paying for but you might find it interesting for the free month (so long as you don't forget to cancel). You're unlikely to save any money having it.

400ixl

northernsparky said:

I’ve used my Hive system for about a year now- no problems whatsoever, and the ability to control the central heating or hot water via the hive app comes in useful at times. I don’t see any advantage in using smart TRV’s , and agree with @Bendo that paying for hive plus is a total waste of money 

I am using Hive and smart TRV's in combination and it works very well and is reducing the cost of heating the home.

As each radiator is individually controlled we get much more control over the heating and don't need to get the coldest room up to temperature before the others get fine control. The boiler is coming on less during the times where the heating is set to be on as it is focussing on heating the right radiators. Probably not saving on the pump running, but it is using less heating oil to do the same as it was before.

Not using Hive Plus as I have Home Assistant running for the smart home side of it and can as far as I can see do everything Hive Plus does there.

badger09

Thanks for useful comments which pretty much confirmed my thoughts on Hive Plus. I haven’t, & don’t intend to take up the offer, but since today Hive app shows new features. On Heating History for today it says ‘Heating Performance Good’ apparently meaning set temp reached ‘in the time Hive expected’🤔 & for earlier weeks there's phrases like ‘22% down from last week’ and ‘31% up from last week’. The latter are useful as snapshots I suppose. 

RavingMad

I too have the month's free trial.  I've looked back as far as it goes to see how much heating I was using and what temperature it was at the time but i don't see how it's going to save me money. It's not even useful as my mindset is different now that I'm on the cheaper Octopus tracker

badger09

@RavingMad
I agree. The outside temps are interesting but I wonder how accurate they are. Also our heating usage is hugely affected by sunny v wet weather which isn’t shown. 

It looks as though some of the Plus features have been added without me signing up but I don’t see how it’s going to save me money. 

jimjames

400ixl said:

northernsparky said:

I’ve used my Hive system for about a year now- no problems whatsoever, and the ability to control the central heating or hot water via the hive app comes in useful at times. I don’t see any advantage in using smart TRV’s , and agree with @Bendo that paying for hive plus is a total waste of money 

Not using Hive Plus as I have Home Assistant running for the smart home side of it and can as far as I can see do everything Hive Plus does there.

Do you have anything for Home Assistant that archives the Hive data, I found the data disappears after a few weeks and it would be nice to have a longer term record?

Bendo

jimjames said:

400ixl said:

northernsparky said:

I’ve used my Hive system for about a year now- no problems whatsoever, and the ability to control the central heating or hot water via the hive app comes in useful at times. I don’t see any advantage in using smart TRV’s , and agree with @Bendo that paying for hive plus is a total waste of money 

Not using Hive Plus as I have Home Assistant running for the smart home side of it and can as far as I can see do everything Hive Plus does there.

Do you have anything for Home Assistant that archives the Hive data, I found the data disappears after a few weeks and it would be nice to have a longer term record?

Your best option there is something like Influxdb and then using Grafana to chart the data.

RavingMad

I now have 6 timing slots, whereas it's normally 5? I've used that slot during the week but it's not a game changer