Hive? Nest? Something else? Help!

[gluenotsoup]

We have a Worcester Bosch combi boiler, and a rubbish thermostat thing. It’s totally unreliable, doesn’t work properly, and isn’t user friendly at all.
What do I replace it with? I want it to be idiot proof (me) and reliably easy to use. I might want the heating on in different rooms at different times every day, or just to put it on when we need to. It’s quite a large house, all radiators apart from 1 have thermostatic valves.
🙂

We have a Hive system with smart radiator valves so we can heat different rooms at different times and have schedules for them all. Our boiler is WB too. It all works fine and it's handy to be able to adjust temperatures in individual rooms from phone or have set schedules for each of them (for example the playroom doesn't get heated on nursery days, my office isn't heated outside work hours and days, bedrooms come on just before bedtime to get room up to temp then again an hour before we get up, and so on).

The valves were quite pricey but I think they will pay for themselves eventually with only heating rooms when needed rather than the whole house.

We just changed our boiler and got a nest (3rd gen - this is important) I consider myself fairly technically able and cracked on sorting out the schedule and turned on the geofencing etc. and was delighted with myself.

What I didn’t realise is that it is a learning thermostat so when we were home , based on the geofencing (I work from home FT!) kept turning the heating on to hit the threshold we’d set. We only realised when I walked past a radiator and it was blazing hot. Quickly worked out how to turn off that feature and only realised that it had been on full for 18 hours the day before. Turned off that feature pdq!

I don’t know about zoned heating for Nest, mine runs off the temp in the pace the controller is plugged in (bedroom) but it does connect to our heat pump and you can run them all off alexa, aswelI as the app.

So my verdict so far, not as idiot proof as I would like and very different to having a traditional thermostat

I could have written your post OP. I had a Hive installed. Haven't used it yet as haven't put the heating in but the app looks really straight forward which was essential after the piece of crap that was installed before.

Hmm. So the Hive sounds a bit easier so far. Is it easy to actually set up, and do I have to change the valves? I’m rubbish at stuff like this, and while dh has a very IT /techy job he seems to just blank this type of thing out.

I'm having a hive installed Monday OP so will report back!

can I ask, do you have to change radiator thermostats to "intelligent" ones to control each room separately? we have the heating zoned into ground and first floor but each thermostat only works when the heating is o?

The smart valves just screw on to replace the old ones, if you already have manual ones (the ones with 1-5 on them). If you don't have thermostatic valves at all it's more of a job.

But you don't need smart valves for Hive - you can run it with the wall thermostat unit, but then you don't have such fine control of heating individual rooms, as it just will switch on and off based on temperature of room where thermostat is.

Manual TRVs give you some level of control in that the numbers on them correlate to temperatures (not how hot the radiators get, as you might think). So you can set them from 1-5 based on how warm you like rooms to be - setting 3 is around 20 degrees if I remember rightly. But you don't have the precision of smart valves and the only way to turn them off and on totally at different times of day is to do so manually.

I have a hive thermostat but no valves yet, I think you would need someone to fit the thermostat as it has to be connected on the boiler, but the trv’s are easy if you already have ones as it’s just unscrew one and then screw on the new.
Personally I decided against the trv’s because the hearings only on when we’re all here and all rooms are used, but the room stat is well worth it as you can pause or boost heating whilst out

Thank you everyone, thats all very useful! So, we do have the manual thermostatic valves already, and it’s easy to replace them, so I think we would probably see how we got on and change them in the future if we wanted to. Do you need a plumber to actually connect it to the boiler? And are you happy with it in general?

Any updates?
We have wet underfloor heating with a separate thermostat to the rest of the house which is central heating.

We have tado valves on the radiators and tado thermostats on the wall of each room, which means we can control our heating room by room using the apple home app on our phones, or the tado app.
we have a general timer set up (eg, should be 20 deg at 7am when we get up) so if it’s chilly the heating will come on for the rooms that need it.
My husband is much more technologically savvy than me so he did all the setup, but using it is very straightforward.

I’m not sure if it’s connected but Hive was on Rip off Britain this week. I was only half listening but something about the internet connection not being operational after August 2025. They were mainly talking about external security alarm system. It might be that internal systems will still operate. Worth checking it though.

I have a Tado, and have had for years. It has a smart valve for the room I wfh in, and the main thermostat in the sitting room. When we’re both out it switches the heating off, even if it’s a heating-on time. DH works irregular shifts, I wfh in a room you can close off, so my office is on a different schedule to the house. And of course you can change it instantly from the app.

DH has a habit of leaving his phone at home when we go out so the cats stay warm 🙄