Is British Gas Hive Any Good?
There have been a lot of adverts on television at the moment regarding Hive – the new Active heating kit from British Gas.
Included in your Hive Active Heating Kit is a thermostat (wireless), a hub that plugs into your broadband router, and allows you to control the wireless thermostat, and a receiver that gets installed close to the boiler (by a qualified engineer).
The Hive app, brings this all together allowing households to control their heating from (in theory) anywhere in the world. So if you happen to be out and about and want to get home to a toasty warm house, then you simply log into the software on your phone – both Android and iPhone, and turn up the heating.
Why is Hive Active Heating necessary?
When we are talking to customers, a lot of people don’t fully appreciate the need for a thermostat. If you set about insulating your home to the recommended levels, for example 270mm of loft insulation, cavity or solid wall insulation, draught proof the property and put double glazing in, then you could save your self a lot of money on your heating bills.
The only way you are going to see the savings though is by putting down the heating, otherwise you are going to spend a great deal of money, and your home is just going to get very warm. The whole point of energy efficiency is allowing you to live life the same, but using less energy to do so. So in the home, that means the temperature needs to stay the same as it was prior to installing the insulation and as a result of the insulation, you will need less gas (or other kind of heating) to maintain the temperature.
A thermostat allows you to do just that, and a wireless thermostat is even better – since you can move it around the home to the most effective place. For example positioning a thermostat in a corridor by the front door means that every time the door opens, cold air will rush into the home and fire up the boiler, when potentially this is just not needed.
Furthermore, British Gas have enabled homeowners to control this thermostat from anywhere via 3g on their phone and the Hive Active Heating App. This gives the household unprecedented control over the heating of their home.
Forgot to turn the heating off, just as you arrive at the airport for a two-week holiday?
No problem! Simply log in, and turn the thermostat down. No more wasting energy unnecessarily.
How could Hive be improved? Click page 2 below to find out!
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I cant believe you can now control youe heating and utilities from a mobile phone its crazy lol, just think about sitting on the beech thinking damn the heating is still set to 20 degrees and being able to just turn it down from your mobile…. love it totally amazing
Great idea and hopefully the other energy suppliers will follow suit. The main draw back I can see is that you need to leave your router turned on though this only consumes 10-15w on my Virgin unit which is probably is offset by the gas saving.
The Heat Genius heating control system does seem to be more flexible than the British Gas offering. Has anyone used this yet on this forum?
I have an Atag weather-compensating thermostat – any ideas on how the systems could integrate?
Hi Paul, we had the pleasure of spending a couple of hours with Alasdair Woodbridge of Heat Genius at Ecobuild, I think his solution is certainly more flexible than the other intelligent heating controls, providing both learning ability (as seen by the Nest), and the ability to create many zones (up to 50 TRVs can be included in one system) which is the key selling point of the honeywell evohome so we shall see how he gets on against the competition!
To clarify a few points:
1. The boiler control unit isn’t necessarily next to the boiler.
2. You haven’t mentioned the fact that your hot water can be controlled too.
3. You can manage the system over any internet connection (e.g WiFi)
4. Set up your existing thermostatic radiator valves accordingly… That way when the existing central thermostat hits temp the other rooms will be at your required level. Much simpler and much cheaper!
5. One of your commenters mentioned that the cost of keeping the Virgin router on would outweigh the cost of any savings. New batteries for the calculator please!
talking about batteries- our experience is that we have to replace them every 2 months even with top quality batteries. You need to offset the cost of these against savings about which i am rather sceptical. We have also had a bit of hassle with it as it goes wrong now and then. it came “free” with our new boiler otherwise i would be seriously miffed. if i were having to buy one i certainly wouldn’t bother with this. Frankly i can’t see why anyone would want to bother with the ap- we just left it as a free standing controller. i cannot envisage circumstances when i would want to use the ap. The other drawback with this is that there are only two on/off time slots per day- not terribly sophisticated
I already have a wireless thermostat and TRV’s in most rooms. If no one is at home we don’t have the heating on. Our boiler has a built in frost protection. Our current boiler can heat up very quickly so we just turn on the heating when we get home ( house is warm in 10 minutes) and turn it off an hour before we go to bed. I fail to see how turning the heating on 45 minutes before we get home is going to save me money. Just by getting an efficient boiler installed has reduced our energy by 48% in 1 year ( though we did have a mild winter) To be honest I would not expect to use this app more than 6 times in a year. So in my book a total waste of £200 which I would never recover. You would be better off spending £200 on extra loft insulation.
I installed the pre-Hive remote control system from British Gas. This was in a house with plenty of loft & cavity wall insulation as well as high-efficiency double glazing. I also have hot water provided from solar thermal panels so I am now maxed out on energy savings in terms of heat generation & insulation.
The benefit from a system such as Hive is that it enables scheduling timing & temperature control on a day by day basis. My remote thermostat is in the open plan living room/kitchen so directly controls the temperature in this space.
Recently I have installed LightwaveRF Wi-Fi controlled thermostatic radiator valves (TRV’s). I had hoped the Hive type system would provide further functionality of this sort (i.e some form of zone heating control) but that has not happened. However the combination of the Hive type system for boiler on/off and the Lightwave TRV’s means that I can now monitor/schedule temperature in each room and limit when rooms are heated on an individual room basis. This all works through a smart phone app in the same way as Hive.
Given the ever increasing cost of energy even a modest saving will pay back in a relatively short time. Being able to control heating from a smart phone will soon be seen just as vital as that insulation in the loft?
Totally useless. The Thermostat seems to continually loose communication. I am having to replace it’s batteries several times a year. If you want a reliable system do not get one of these.
Im having mine removed. Never works. Geating bill has gone up not down as i cant change schedule remotely when im away.
Passwod constantly needs to be changed
buggesr waste of money ever
Fantastic! No problems with this at all! The App is easy to use and valuable….turning the heating on when being away for the weekend is great…and to turn the hot water off timer when you forget when you go away!
I believe Hive is a product for those who do not have a brain. With Thermostat controlled valves and a simple timer. I, like most responsible adults have managed our heating systems for years. Hive is a gimmick, a product of someones warped imagination, the sort of thing someone thinks of and then tries to create a market for it. How easy to fool the British public into buying something they will rarely use.
I find Hive extremely good but unfortunately today the app is not responding look ok from my end so only presume it’s something on the gas boards side.. Can’t get any information very frustrating!