Installing it was far easier than actually getting the system delivered. Amazon totally lost the first one- don't ask me how. The replacement turned up this morning, within about 16 hrs of their promising a replacement.
Installation took may be an hour, if that. We had a wired thermostat and removing it was easy enough. I left the wires in place but isolated, just in case I need to revert for any reason.
Setting up was straight forward, including integrating with Alexa and setting up for automatic turn off using our phones when we are both out of the house based on Geolocation.
The application seems rather clever. It seems you can review the actual temp and therefore your timings to ensure optimal settings.
The extra Hive controlled Plugs are about 50% more expensive than similar ones, which don't work with Hive. Plus Hive doesn't support the Ikea smart bulbs, which is a niggle as the Ikea ones are cheaper than the Philips ones. Hovever, the Ikea ones do work with Alexa, as do some of the cheaper smart plugs.
"Brian Reay" wrote in message news:ps1k46$cq$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me...
Yes, I converted our timer unit and thermostat to Hive and it probably took about half an hour to change the wiring, including disconnecting the backing plate for the old controller and connecting the one for the Hive controller. Modern timer units use a standard backing plate in which case it is a two minute job, but our old controller was a larger non-standard design. One little problem that I had to work around was that the control wires for the CH and HW were both virtually the same colour - a very dark grey that was almost the same colour as the black of the mains neutral wire (old-style wiring). I made sure I wrapped a "CH" and "HW" tag around the two wires in case we ever moved house and I needed to re-fit the original controller.
Setting up the hub (the device that connects to the internet - Ethernet only, no wifi - and then talked by private radio link to the thermometer and control relay unit) was dead easy. And we got the Android app working pretty quickly. My wife is the Alexa expert, so she handled that side of it, trying to work out the correct phrases to turn CH on and off by hand, and to turn the temp up and down.
We got the remote access of the Hive working, so we were able to go away on holiday with the thermostat turned down low, and then when we got off our cruise liner in Southampton turn the temperature up, ready for when we got home several hours later. We could even see the house temperature gradually going up.
I was going to short-out the original thermostat, which is redundant, but I decide it was easier just to turn it up to a full-scale never-reached temperature so it remained permanently calling for heat.
Fast forward about 5 years and we were about to move house. I found where I'd put the old controller and backing plate. I unwired the Hive plate and pulled the cable through the slot in the backing box ready to attach it to the original backing plate. And in doing so I ripped off all my little labels :-( The live and neutral were obvious, but which of these dark grey wires was CH and which was HW? I had to do it by trail and error: manually turn on the CH and see if the radiators started to get hot. As it happened, they didn't, but they did when I turned on the HW in the same way. So it was a matter of swapping over the two wires on the backing plate. What bozo uses the same colour wire for both CH and HW? I'm not sure whether it was the guy that fitted the original boiler that was there when we bought the house, or the guy that fitted a replacement boiler when the original one developed an irreparable leak in the heat exchanger. When I had the boiler serviced just before we sold the house, I was telling the engineer (the same one that fitted the new boiler) all about it and he was a bit sceptical about what would be required for him to do it if anyone ever asked, but I showed him how it was just a like-for like replacement of the controller (and maybe its backing plate) and the rest was computer geekery which hopefully the customer could do because it wasn't dangerous (ie no mains voltages). He even knocked a bit off the bill for servicing the boiler.
A friend of mine has been told that the app only tells you what it thinks is happening and not if the boiler stops working is that true, so you could look and see what you set, but go in and its freezing as the boiler failed. Is there no way to alert the person this may have occurred so they can ring a neighbour? Brian
I don't know how sophisticated the monitoring/feedback is.
For the heating, you get a reading of the temp on you phone so if that isn't going up when the heating is on or down when off, that would indicate something amiss to a first approximation.
You can set up notifications but I think only by Email. I don't know if these can go to third parties.
If I may, once set up, the system would in my opinion, be easy for someone with limited vision. Please do not be offended by my mentioning that, I assure you that was not my intention.
We've no plans to move for the foreseeable future, I was more thinking of if the system failed etc.
I'm curious to see how much, if anything, it reduces gas usage. Tuning the on / off times and using the geolocation should, in theory, mean the boiler is on less.
- a controller (one or two remotely-controlled relays that turn on CH and HW when the time schedule and the thermostat asks it to)
- a thermostat
- a hub that talks over private wireless (not wifi) to the controller and the thermostat, and connects by Ethernet (not wifi) to your router, to allow remote control by an Android app or a web interface
The controller simply turns the CH (and also HW if your boiler has timed HW); it has no way of knowing whether the boiler has responded to turning on the power to it in the same way that conventional timer controller and thermostat (wired in series to give an AND logic) has no way of confirming this.
However if the room temp does not start to increase (as registered by the Hive's thermostat) that is a good sign that something's not working correctly. But AFAIK it doesn't check this itself - it's up to you to make sure that it's behaving itself. But that is no worse that having a conventional timer and thermostat: if you set the timer and go out, you trust the boiler to come on at the chosen time and to keep coming on and going off as directed by the thermostat, so as to keep the house at a fairly constant temperature.
I've not found that the Hive was temperamental. It seemed to do as it was told, 100% reliably. The difficulty would be doing the initial setup, both of the hub (it needs you to create an account on the Hive site and it automatically determines the MAC address of the hub) and the day-to-day setting of time and temperature schedules such as "set the temperature to 15 deg between 23:00 and 06:00; set the temp to 18 deg between 06:00 and 08:00; set the temp to 21 deg between 08:00 and 23:00", with different schedules on different days of the week. The Android app probably doesn't lend itself to a screenreader. I *think* you can do all the same operations from the web interface, though I'm not sure what a screenreader would make of it. You
*may* need some assistance from a sighted person in setting it up and if you needed to alter the schedules, though since the web interface is accessible from any browser on the internet (as long as the username and password are known) this does not need to be someone in the same household.
You've confirmed my understanding of the way the system communicates so, unless we are both wrong, the above is probably accurate ;-)
As for the web interface vs the screen reader, one thing I've not found on the former is the Geolocation option- not surprising as PCs don't generally have GPS etc, which the function uses when setting up and operating. Once set up, including refining the timing periods, I don't expect to be using either app other than perhaps to switch to/from holiday mode- although I wonder if that will be needed with geolocation. (I assume it goes into frost mode, ration than off when you are out of range.)
I tried to observe the geolocation function last night but the very mild weather led to the heating hardly running.
One, minor, niggle, the geolocation only seems to work on the heating. If it also worked on the water, you wouldn't need a holiday mode.
One thing to be aware of: IIRC, in holiday mode you can't see the temperature remotely. When I go away, I put it on Manual, rather than using Holiday Mode, and turn the set temperature down to the frost point (7 degrees). It means it doesn't reset to normal automatically at the end of the holiday - but at least I can then monitor the actual temperature remotely. [Hive seems to think that people don't want to see what's going on at home when they're on holiday. They might be right in some cases - but not in mine!]
As it happens, I will probably rely on the Geolocation function rather than holiday mode as someone sometimes 'house sits' and I will add them to the Geolocation function.
My next question, how to manage multiple properties- Hive is perfect for second home etc. Having one place 'turn off' as you leave and the other turn on as you get near would be ideal, especially if it was totally automatic. As I mentioned earlier, I can't see a way to make the hot water work with Geolocation so may be a (soft) button press will be required for that.
My eldest's timer on her boiler is playing up. I've looked at the beast on the internet and I think I may be able to swap it for a Hive system. She is bringing the exact model details this weekend (she lives about 25 mins away) and I plan to explore further. While the Hive system is more expensive than the replacement timer, it seems the model she has are reknowned for failing and it may well work out a wise investment. Number two daughter's house had a Hive system when she bought it, less the hub (it seems you take your hub with you when you move!) but they've since bought a hub. While it worked without the hub, having the hub allows them to control it remotely and setting up timings etc is much easier.
All in all, I'm most impressed by the system. While, being retired, we don't go out to work etc, we do tend to travel, go out for days etc. and being able to control / monitor things is an advantage. Nothing worse than returning from a long trip, tired etc, to a cold house.
I suppose a similar system for our motorhome (which has central heating) would be a bit over the top ;-)
We've got a holiday flat in addition to our main home, and usually spend about a week of each month at the flat - but sometimes change our plans at short notice. Both properties have gas-powered wet space heating systems and stored hot water. I've installed a Hive system in each property. It takes about two hours (on a good day!) to travel between properties, but the warm-up time in the winter is considerably longer than that - so geo-location wouldn't help. It's easy enough - either with the web interface on a PC or the app on a smartphone - to turn on the heating and hot water before we set out so that everything is toasty when we arrive. I don't think we need it to be any more "automatic" than that.
Do you have two Hive accounts - one per property? I can't see a way to add a second hub to an account.
There is the 360 Hub option available to add but I'm not familiar with that.
Good point re turning on before you set off- maybe expecting fully automatic is a bit OTT. Although you could increase the turn on range- may be 10 miles for your holiday home?
I installed central heating in my place in 2002. I did it to beat the new Part-L regs - although it more than conformed, I wasn't going to go through all the building regs paperwork. (Did same with double glazing.)
At the time, I was working for Sun Microsystems and did a lot of travel away from home as my team was spread across continents. The house already had home automation which I started a few years before and controlled a pair of individual gas wall heaters which the house had at that time.
One of the design factors of the new central heating was fast heat-up from cold. IIRC, my calculations showed the house needed around 11kW to maintain room temp at -3C outside. I bought a 25kW condensing boiler (Keston C25) and over-sized the radiators. This enabled the boiler to run at low flow/return temperatures (normally runs as 45/32), but it also means I can pump the full 25kW into the house for fast warm up by winding boiler up to max temperature, at which temperature the total radiator output slightly exceeds 25kW (so boiler never actually makes it to its max flow of 83C). This max output can heat the house from cold in 30-60 mins.
If I was to design another heating system, I would probably do it exactly the same way as this again.
It turned out the Keston C25 boiler was not particularly reliable. It was one of the first domestic condensing boilers, although it does have a stainless steel heat exchanger unlike any of the early models from the traditional british manufacturers which corroded to bits. However, I suspect that because mine normally operates at 45/32, and because I service it myself, mine still looks brand new inside and out, whereas most have long since died and been replaced.
My system is designed to run at delta-T 30C with a flow/ret of 55/45 which is well within the condensing range.
Radiators were balanced with a dual input thermocouple meter and dual pipe clamp probes (because fairly quick and easy)
As most radiators are quoted for delta-T 50C, this contains some correction factors I found at one manufacturer's site.
I don't have weather compensation, so I tend to do that manually - boiler setting 4 currently for delta-T 30C, but I will turn up to 5 (d-T
40C) or 6 (45C) as winter progresses.
Actual heat demand had been estimated as I'd run on electric rads for a year before so had power meters on those.
In practise, heat up is rapid except for the Kitchen which is not as well sized as I'd like due to lack of wall space (had to use a pair of vertical high output rads, but it's a big space with 2 external walls).
Sheet was handy for estimating water volume which exceeds the boiler spec, so I added a secondary expansion vessel too.
I agree with Andrew - if you have the chance to replace a whole system, it is well worth taking the chance to design and put in the biggest rads you can within reason.
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