Hive active heating from British Gas

Hi all, curious if anyone has had this installed and can comment. On the face of it a very attractive product, includes App based remote control and lots of energy saving / smart features.

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Other than looking slightly slick, why do you think it is a ‘very attractive product’? It has an app so you can screw about with your house when you are not there. The features will only be energy saving and smart if the user is energy saving and smart. A dumbass can use this to be dumb if they want to.
If you can program your system over 7 days (£40 from Screwfix) you’d probably do just about as well and not need the telemetry and app bit.

British gas will charge Waaaay over the odds as well. Our landlord ended up with only BG available at short notice and paid £3.5k for a replacement boiler. A year earlier we used local plumber who did same job on our flat for £1.2k- and I thought that expensive.. .

If you have a contract with BG and say your existing controls were not working they would offer to install for £99 there and then 😀

I’m using remote heating control now, which is the forerunner to hive, and should probably install a hive at some point. We’ve used ours to good effect. In use it’s a handy tool to have, and no more expensive than any other wireless kit to install.

Well this is weird.. I actually had this fitted yesterday.! Did a bit of research and it’s competitively priced for what it is, likely to have it’s features expanded over time too with natty features like shutting the heating off when you leave the house etc.

Anyway, for right now it seems to be a cool system, easy schedule with individual temperatures per period. Biggest advantage for us is that we only had a timer previously with no thermostat so this was around the same price as a decent programmer/wireless thermostat upgrade and I didn’t have to fit it or pay someone to fit it.. The Hive is £199 fitted.
I’m pretty happy, house is much more comfortable and I don’t have to keep running back and forward to the timer to boost/switch off the heating. 🙂

Other than looking slightly slick, why do you think it is a ‘very attractive product’?

It’s wireless, simple to use, has an app so you can use to reconfigure it away from home and, compared to the rubbish installed at the moment, is a much more flexible thermostat. It also manages hot water as well as heating which is convenient. Our current management of heating is awful as the thermostat is in the wrong location (hall) and whilst preset timing schedules work fairly well they don’t offer the flexibility our lifestyle really needs. If a £40 Screwfix product can solve all these issues I’m all ears. Fire away.

The only other product I’m seriously considering is Nest but a) it’s not available it the UK yet b) it’s more expensive and c) it’s heating only.

Heatmiser look attractive but I’ve not researched the hot water / heating solution yet so if anyone can shed light on their solutions I’d appreciate it. If I was starting fresh with a brand new system it would probably be Heatmiser but as a retro fit I’m not sure yet.

Salus rt500 will cost 35 quid

7 day programable wireless thermostat.

Unless you really like the gimic of being able to adjust the heating on the move.

Never use my heating except in the morning anyway so just have it set to keep the chill out the house the rest of the time but plenty of insulation usually prevents it from triggering 🙂

H1ghland3r you situation sounds similar to ours. We have a fairly basic boiler as far as I can see, with timer and dials / thermostats for hot water and radiators on the front on the boiler itself (in the cupboard with no thermostat elsewhere in the house).

This does appeal. Was yours a fairly simple boiler that got “upgraded” by having this system fitted?

Double post

Trail_Rat this looks like a heating only solution and very basic. Also, how much will it cost me to get someone to install it? I’m not about to try it myself as I don’t have the time or inclination. The Hive looks like a much more polished solution with much better features and it’s installed for £199. That does not sound expensive at all to me.

Granted if I had time to learn about this and figure out how to do it myself something like this would be possible but this is not the case. I also don’t see remote control of heating and hot water as a gimmick, I see this in most of the homes we work on and almost everyone notes it as one of the most useful features of their system. These are much more expensive multi-zone systems but non the less, I want some of it…just at a more affordable price!

Yep mike that’s it exactly.
Ours is an old (pre 2000) WorchesterBosch Highflow400 combi boiler. Thanks to the wonders of British Gas’ Homecare insurance almost every component of the boiler has been replaced over the last few years while they tried to resolve a pressure issue with the CH. 😀
They basically came and unwired the timer/programmer that was mounted on the wall next to the boiler and replaced it with a smaller box that has indicator lights for heating and hot water. That box is a more sophisticated programmer that accepts it’s setup from your phone or the website.
It’s super convenient, I’ve been adjusting the timings and temperatures on the schedule for the last few days and the house is a much more consistent temperature at the right times.

You can get a Salus wifi enables RF Stat for about £150 at least you’re not then tied to BG. Salus stuff is cheap but cheerful. Heatmiser systems look more polished but cost as much as this Hive thing. Suppose if you’re a BG customer it’s okay but what happens if you change energy supplier?

Ooh almost forgot. Make sure you get the dual circuit one that controls hot water too, it’s the same price but I needed to ask the guy for it. Means you can boost the HW when you are on the way back from your nightride.!! 😀

Speaking of which I have a question for the great and the good of boilertrackworld.
Combi boiler with no HW tank, do you have the HW on all the time or on a schedule.? Can’t find a definitive answer one way or the other as to which is more cost effective. I believe our combi has a small (15L.?) internal header tank to allow for instant hot water rather than the small wait for the boiler to heat the mains water.
Anyone.?

Matt, the BG system does not require you to be a BG customer. I’m currently on a fixed EDF contract.

I’ve got a Heatmiser wifi thermostat on the underfloor electric heating in our apartment in Austria.
Allows me to keep an eye on the room temp and turn on if needed, set times, holiday mode etc.
Should save me a fortune as you usually have to leave the heating on low from October to stop pipes freezing etc, whereas I have just turned it on now.
I also use LightwaveRF in Austria and at home.
Use a relay to operate a contactor to switch on the main storage heaters in the Apartment.

Unfortunately its not got a Windows app, so I’m out !

Funny Heatmiser should come up as I’d already been looking at their Wi-Fi stats, they offer a pretty similar solution and currently top of my list; hence my interest in the Hive as I’m curious to see how they stack up.

Highlander – a Combi is always on for hot water. You turn a tap on and the boiler fires up that’s it. Don’t know which boiler you have but some if they have a internal store have a pre-heat function which means it fires every now and then to make sure that the water in the internal store is ready to go all the time and that it’s hot enough.

That’s the information I’ve been reading Matt.. but if we have our HW switched off at the programmer than we don’t get any hot water.!?

Hence the question, on at the programmer all the time which presumably keeps the small header hot all the time, or on a schedule so that the header is only hot when we are likely to need it.!?!?!
Basically is it cheaper to keep a small volume of water hot all day or to let it go cold and then heat it up twice a day when we need it.?

Hi,

I’ve created a Google + community “British Gas Hive Heating”

Not too sure if this link will work, but you should be able to find it on G+

https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/104499721670091864933

and now a forum:

http://britishgashive.freeforums.org

highland3r

we have a combi boiler on oil and the hot waters on all the time firing up as needed.

we find that over the warmer months (from april – october) when the heating is off we use sod all oil – doesnt register on the scale hardly.
u
in the winter when we are heating the house you could watch the scale(on the tank not a watchman) go down over a matter of a month when its fired up……

in my non scientifc experiment im just going to leave mine on – good anti freezing deterant (boilers in the back garden)

Our new house (moved in last month) had a new baxi boiler and thermostat installed by British gas about a year ago (by previous owner) but they’ve left in the ancient programmer which seems to be a bit flakey. If I understand it correctly the hive will replace both of these controls?? Does something use the existing wiring of the programmer or is it a new connection to the boiler? I only ask as it programmer is currently in a fairly awkward position close to the kitchen worktop so it would be great to lose that.

Hive controller directly replaces the programmer. It’s left a bit of a mess on our wall as the new box is the same size as a single gang socket (but about 1″ deep) and the old programmer was twice as wide. Not bothered for me as the programmer was in a corner of the utility room but if your’s is in an obvious place in the kitchen then I’d expect some remedial touching up would be required..

This is the control box that wires to the boiler, replacing the programmer..

You can just but a wifi thermostat eg Heatmiser:

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Heatmiser Wifi Thermostat iPhone App[/url] by brf[/url], on Flickr

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Heatmiser Wifi Thermostat[/url] by brf[/url], on Flickr

It’s something I have toyed with installing too. Here’s a couple of other options that are on my reading list:

“Tado” offers some fancy features above that of Hive, including the control of heating by geofencing:

http://www.tado.com/de-en/

Review: Europe’s answer to Nest, Tado the iPhone-controlled intelligent thermostat

“Green Momit” is another:

http://www.greenmomit.com/

Had a Tado for a week or so now, happy with it so far.

Currently got BG chaps here fitting Hive. Will report back…

update following my question above. BG came round yesterday to fit HIVE. Only took the guy a little over an hour to fit. i asked him if the control box could be put somewhere other than on the old programmer position. no problem, he put it in the airing cupboard next to the tank and put a blank plate over the wiring in the kitchen.
very happy with the system so far. we dont keep regular hours in this house so being able to quickly and easily adjust the heating whilst out and about will be a real bonus