Help with Hive!

[Excitedannie]

Hi, I'm going into hospital shortly for an op which will mean a fair amount of recuperation at home. I was thinking of getting the Hive heating thermostat which means I could rest and control the heating that way rather than up and down the stairs.

Can anyone help me with what I need? I have a conventional boiler and I just want a simple set up. I currently have a wifi thermostat in the hallway. Do I need an electrician to instal it? Thanks in advance!

If you already have a wi-fi thermostat why would you need Hive ?

Are you able to control the current thermostat from your phone ?

We had Hive fitted by a heating engineer. We also have a standard boiler and we had one to control the water as well

Even I managed to set up the app

Ring British Gas and an engineer will install it and set it up for you. Love mine

sorry, I wasn't clear - the thermostat is wifi in the sense that it communicates with the boiler that way - it's not one that is controllable by the phone/app. I'm fairly tech savvy but I'm just not sure what I need - too much choice!

Ah that makes sense. Any heating engineer will be able to sort this. Ours did all that was needed and fitted the relevant parts. We've had the Hive box relocated from where the original thermostat was

Ours was fitted by the boiler engineer and we love it. If you are resting in one room then you can bring the thermostat in with you and control the heating to the exact level you want.

NB we learned recently that if the batteries in the thermostat go then the entire system fails…

Thank you all! I'll make a couple of phonecalls! Last question - do you control your hot water from it or is that an additional requirement?

It controls the heating and hot water

Ours controls both as we have a standard boiler

I'm still getting to grips with it, just realised I don't have to keep changing the times. I can set several options and switch them off and in at will

Ie, sometimes OH is up at 4am, then is off shift so need for water (and eventually heating,) to be on until later

When you buy the hive hub and thermostat you can add on installation at the point of buying it so you don’t have to faff around finding someone to install it. Even when we got ours from Amazon we could add it on.

thanks all! Now I'm confused as to whether I need a Hive hub?!

Yes you need the Hive thermostat and hive hub with installation.

The options on Amazon are a little confusing, so I would probably try a local installer or call British Gas.

I rarely touch the physical thermostat as I use the app, or Siri to control it which is much simpler.

I also don't bother paying for "Hive Plus".

Thanks - you've confirmed what I thought. Although I've now stumbled across the Tapo range - I've gone down a thermostat hole....!

I've had Hive since it was called "My home", so 10+ years and zero problems.

I like the way it works with Apple HomeKit, so I can automate it into scenes, and have it automatically turn the heating on/off depending on occupancy.

No doubt there are alternatives, but installation is probably better covered by Hive.

Only if you heat your water from the boiler. If you want it to heat the water with an electric immersion heater you will need more equipment.

My husband fitted our Hive in about 15 minutes, it was that simple, but getting the immersion heater to work with it took quite a bit of extra work.

thanks all! Now I'm confused as to whether I need a Hive hub?

You will. The hub is the device that links all the Hive components together and also connects them to the internet so that you can control everything from the app.

How big is your house and do you want to heat all of it to the same temperature? If you only need to heat your bedroom during the day, you have a large house, and on an ongoing basis someone is at home during the day, then you may want to consider having TRV’s installed on every radiator (apart from one which acts as a vent in some way - we don’t have them in the bathrooms) so that the other rooms can be switched off whilst your room is warmed. That route is quite expensive but has saved us much more money than it cost over the 6 years we’ve had it installed.

We have been happy with Hive but I know a lot of people have problems with the set up and British Gas have had a tendency to introduce new products to the system and then discontinue them or fiddle with the interface to make something that was simple to view and manage much less user friendly.

I’d definitely consider Tapo if I was doing it again. We have a number of their products (plugs, bulbs, and cameras) and they have worked well.

I didn't realise Tapo did a version, I've been very pleased with the cat cams