Do you have HIVE?

[DustyLee123]

I need a new thermostat and clock really as mine is so old, and I’m considering HIVE. Can anyone who has it tell me if it’s good or not, and is it easy enough for a DIYer to fit themselves?

About £193 I think

We don't use any of these, but have installed Ember in my elderly Mum's home to ensure she is always warm (she can be a bit random these days about keeping it at a cosy temperature). I don't know how similar it is to Hive or Nest but it's great. We control it manually by checking every morning and whacking up the thermostat if need be, but I think you can use it to programme different zones of the house if you want. It was also installed by a heating engineer, cost was just under £200. Worth every penny for peace of mind.

Hubby has just upped the heating at home, we are abroad.

Depends what you want, we have door sensors fitted so lights come on automatically, we also have individual radiator valves

Can Hive remotely reset a boiler for you for example? We came home yesterday from 12 days away and at some point whilst we were away, the boiler had an error and needed resetting. So the house was 5c when we arrived home at 4pm with our 3.5yo and a 9mo. 😭 We managed with some portable heaters, lots of layers, hot water bottles and both DC sleeping in our room for the night until the house warmed up again. Obviously we will be getting someone out to check over the boiler (which was only serviced anyway back in Oct and is less than 3years old) but it made us think that if Hive can reset things remotely, it might be a useful back up to have.

Well i did like it, until my stbexd was arrested and bailed for DA. He refuses to give me the password and im sure takes great pleasure turning it off (I can only.use it manually) turning certain radiators to 7 degrees etc..... i can't prove it's him though according to police.

I've tried doing the "moving in to an existing hive set up" with no joy.

Do you have a portable thermostat? Could you put it in the fridge?

You can buy a new Hive hub (think about £35 from Hive - they might even do it for less if you explain the circumstances). You unplug the existing one and plug in. Set up with a completely new account that you set up. Ex will never have control again. The one thing I dislike about Hive is the hubs are designed to travel with you when you move so as a landlord having put Hive's into properties I have had to buy new hubs for new tenants. In the age of reduce, reuse, recycle they should be able to be reset (I have gone through that process with telephone help and still not had it work so now just accept the hubs have to be changed. In your case it should work in your favour as you can very easily cut the ex out the process.

We have hive in our caravan and I far prefer it to Heatmiser neo that we have in the house. Hive is a v simple on and off. Heatmiser neo does this stupid thing where it predicts when you want the temperature and turns the heating on which is probably great for the temperature but crap for budgeting!

I'm a technophobe but I find hive really easy on my phone ( I can't operate the manual box so that just sits in the hall)

You can set a schedule but then easily override it by advancing to the next time slot or via the boost option if you just want another hour or so's heating.

For example, my schedule has the heating go off at 11.30 am and on again at 5 pm and I've just pressed the advance to 5 pm icon. At other times I just use boost ( often for hot water)

So easy to use!!

Do You all pay a subscription ? I can see that’s an option

No, you can pay one to “get more insights into your data” or some such thing, but we don’t have one. Can still do all easy setting of schedule, adjusting on phone etc.

I am not a Luddite at all when it comes to tech, but I see no point at all in my phone controlling things like heating, fridge or washing machine.

I flick a switch or set a timer and they work. It's just setting up more things to go wrong. Like with washing machines, I always buy the bottom of the range simplest one possible with dials and no digital display. It washes clothes and does not need to be a fucking computer, likely giving Unilever all my data as well.

So is the display in my closet which is not linked up to my phone and is 20 years old. Really easy to set up the heating and hot water on it then just get on with your life. As is the thermostat in the hall with two buttons to set the temperature.

@SharpOpalNewt

Of course but the advantage of a HIVE is that you can turn the heating on when you're away from the house

I assumed OP wanted this facility and was asking about the ease or otherwise of operating it.

My point was that it's as easy, if not more so, than a traditional heating time switch

Yes I have it it works pretty well for most people.

Key benefits to me :

i) Can control your home remotely, so you can get switch the heating off when you go out, but switch it on before you come back to warm the place up. You can also obviously control if you are away on holiday and get thermal information on the house so switch on heating for frost protection.

ii) Schedule programming can be more complex than on a traditional timer.

iii) You can link it up to other stuff like TRVs.

Drawbacks :

i) They are trying to increase the revenue from it. So there are costs if you want some of the more advanced options.

ii) They have killed off some of the additional devices like cameras in the past which has not made people very happy.

iii) The app can be a bit shakey sometimes but is getting better.

They are easy to DIY fit but I believe do use mains voltages in the connection to the box. Like most things like this, if you have to ask whether you can fit it yourself you are probably not capable of doing it. Luckily the installation service is fairly cheap.

I had mine fitted recently by British Gas and it was under £100 supply and fit which I thought was very reasonable

Yes, our old set up was ok, but it was a bit limited eg I could previously set up a schedule for weekdays vs weekends separately (and older ones I’ve had allowed only “the schedule” regardless of day of the week). But we WFH some days and not others, so it’s great to set the schedule more flexibly (Mondays Tuesdays Thursdays all the same, less heating on Weds and Fri, for example). And this changes quite often, so it’s good that the setting and changing of schedules and adjusting during the day is much easier on a phone interface than any thermostat I’ve used before. If I needed the same heating set up every day and rarely benefited from altering it, maybe I’d think the same as you.

Doesn’t feel in the same “pointless tech” league as ‘smart fridges’ and the like. It’s replacing a typically clunky and inflexible interface with a much better one, allowing me to adjust heating more efficiently.

I have hive but I think you need an engineer to fit it as there is a receiver that connects to the boiler. We like it, being able to set the schedule or ask alexa to boost the heating while were sitting on the sofa or in bed is great or doing it for the doggo if we are out and we see its got a bit cold.

They are not the same! We got Nest in our current house as we found Hive quite clunky and annoying. Nest is incredibly irritating and doesn’t have a boost feature despite people requesting it for years.

I would just set up an account for the house and change the password whenever someone new moves in instead of faffing about like this.

We have a different version of this called Wiser, we have controls on all and an app on my phone. It's brilliant as I can put the heating on in just the rooms we need it, or before I get home from work. Can't imagine not having it now!

I've had Hive for a while now and it's great to be able to boost heat and water remotely - when out for the day and especially coming home from holiday to hot water and heat on if needed.

However, I find the timer settings awkward; doesn't seem possible to get it to go on and off 3 times. Plus I wish I could remotely access the temperature of the hot water and not just the house temperature.

No, I wasn’t thinking of using the remote control aspect, I was just looking at replacing my current thermostat and clock. The clock is old fashioned and only has two on and off options that are the same every day. I have to manually change it at weekends etc

That's exactly the kind of thing it is good for.

For example I only need to heat my water once every other day, because one 30 minute heat does enough hot water for two days. So I program it to come on only on certain days rather than all the time.

A lot of the older simpler controllers lack this sort of flexibility and even if it is flexible the interface to it is often hideous, whereas you can program hive from a nice user interface all from the phone.

You also can set it up to have instant heat/hot water buttons on the home screen of your phone so you don't have to go into the app.

And both the thermostat and the controller (which is normally in the airing cupboard) can be used to activate heating/hot water for various times. The thermostat also has a physical dial for temperature control.