Nest or Hive?

Snap

Looked at it, seemd a bit gimmicky to me. A nice to have, not a necessity. I've got a timer on my heating that turns it on and off when I'm out! Fancy that.

Smoke alarms, CO2 alarms, loads of them, a few quid each.

Re insulation in homes: years ago, I trained as a surveyor, was considering a career change, did the qualifications, but didn't change the career. So, I covered the whole insulation and energy efficiency side of things. There is a big myth around glazing and energy. You only lose about 4 or 5% of your energy through your windows - its a myth propogated by the manufacturers that they save you money. They don't. good for security, noise, but not retaining heat.

The biggest factor is your boiler, then your roof, then your walls, in that order.

and the most expensive thing to address is usually your windows, so the saving per expenditure is miniscule, as opposed to the 1-3 grand you'd spend on replacing a boiler, which you'd recoup quite quickly.

ThePrettyDamned

Snap said:

Looked at it, seemd a bit gimmicky to me. A nice to have, not a necessity. I've got a timer on my heating that turns it on and off when I'm out! Fancy that.

Smoke alarms, CO2 alarms, loads of them, a few quid each.

Re insulation in homes: years ago, I trained as a surveyor, was considering a career change, did the qualifications, but didn't change the career. So, I covered the whole insulation and energy efficiency side of things. There is a big myth around glazing and energy. You only lose about 4 or 5% of your energy through your windows - its a myth propogated by the manufacturers that they save you money. They don't. good for security, noise, but not retaining heat.

The biggest factor is your boiler, then your roof, then your walls, in that order.

and the most expensive thing to address is usually your windows, so the saving per expenditure is miniscule, as opposed to the 1-3 grand you'd spend on replacing a boiler, which you'd recoup quite quickly.

That was my understanding, too. We don't need a new boiler yet, but we did put a load of fibreglass insulation in our loft. It made a massive difference - my room especially, which houses the boiler (!) gets and stays warm all year round. I literally *never* have the radiator on in my room (which may be bad for the radiator, who knows). 

The double glazing did little, but the decrease in noise was welcome nonetheless. Plus we were left alone by soulless double glazing salesmen 

PolarityMan

fretmeister

Still very happy with Hive.

The schedules are dead easy to set with 6 adjustable time periods per 24 hours. There's a boost function for a user set period too.

And if I'm away and the heating was not due to be on, but the weather has suddenly turned very cold I can make sure the house is warm for when I get home.

It also has geolocation so you can set it to be off until someone gets within say 5 miles of home, then it turns on to be ready. I've not tried that yet, but it's cool.

It's also got an anti-frost setting to make sure the pipers are never in danger.

Axe_meister

Going from 100 year old sash Windows to double glazing made hell of a difference for us. Cut out drafts for a start. However the down side was an increase in mould especially on cold walls

Axe_meister

Question about best/hive. We have a wireless thermostat. Can I directly replace with either of these without having to wire them into boiler?

strtdv

I have no interest in an "internet of things". I have the heat on for about 3-4 hours a day over the winter. The house stays fairly warm because it has decent insulation and I changed the external doors from single glazed wooden to 70mm insulated composite and triple glazed. Our boiler, while getting on a bit, was top of the range when new so still manages 91-92% efficiency and isn't worth replacing with oil still fairly cheap.

Dominic

Snap said:

Looked at it, seemd a bit gimmicky to me. A nice to have, not a necessity. I've got a timer on my heating that turns it on and off when I'm out! Fancy that.

Smoke alarms, CO2 alarms, loads of them, a few quid each.

Re insulation in homes: years ago, I trained as a surveyor, was considering a career change, did the qualifications, but didn't change the career. So, I covered the whole insulation and energy efficiency side of things. There is a big myth around glazing and energy. You only lose about 4 or 5% of your energy through your windows - its a myth propogated by the manufacturers that they save you money. They don't. good for security, noise, but not retaining heat.

The biggest factor is your boiler, then your roof, then your walls, in that order.

and the most expensive thing to address is usually your windows, so the saving per expenditure is miniscule, as opposed to the 1-3 grand you'd spend on replacing a boiler, which you'd recoup quite quickly.

In fact,the floor / oversite is one of the most important factors......huge amount is lost to ground in Saps calcs .....that is why the sub -slab celotex/ Jablite or sub screed insulation are an integral section of part L compliance within Building Regs
 Totally agree that a lot of this smart technology is totally superfluous and makes life way too clever .........we grew up having to re-kindle the hearth and get fires going , gladly those days are long gone but a decent condensing boiler,exterior compensator together with a zoned system and thermostatic valves and timeclock is quite enough especially once you have sorted decent insulation...........good Lord,however did we even survive our childhood ?
  As it happens we do not have central heating in our present home, we intended to install when we moved in 14 years ago but are a remote farmhouse with no mains gas so it was a hassle and we never got round to it . We have a few electric heaters in critical locations and some good warm jumpers and we really dont feel the cold .......we are attuned to it with very few snotty colds and a feeling of gasping for air when visiting friends in overheated houses that they are simply used to .........it really is much better for you to live with minimal heating ..........here in SE England it rarely gets cold these days anyway - it may well be a different story for those living in more Northern locations.

exocet

I can see the appeal.....apps for this that and the other but I find it hard to believe that many of us will save money by using heating controls like this.
If you have a new well insulated home then heat up time is quick / heat retention good. I can see how the "auto learning" feature may be of benefit here.

Most UK housing stock is old / poorly insulated / poorly designed from a thermal efficiency perspective. My house is 50 years old (late 1960's) - its insulated as far as is practical to achieve using standard loft fibre glass / double glazing but it falls well short of modern standards. I recently had a single floor extension added - there is a marked difference in the thermal efficiency there!

I run my boiler (9 year old condensing unit) with an external weather compensator. Its not fancy, just measures external air temp. When things get cold, I leave the boiler on for about 18 hours a day (the combination of internal room stat and external compensation unit which modulates the boiler flow temp keeps things at the right temp without burning too much cash. However, the issue with heating system efficiencies (in excess of 90%), you only achieve this figure when the boiler is in condensing mode and unless things have changed, the boiler in only in condensing mode when the flow temp is 56 degrees Celsius or less.   I set this via the heating curve parameter which dictates the flow temp for any given external temperature. So my flow temp never exceeds 56 deg C even when external temp is -2 deg outside. The downside of this is that warm up times are slow......so for me, having a system that I can turn on when I'm 30 mins away from the house is bugger all use, my house takes 3 hours to warm up! 

paul_c2

octatonic said:

I tried to install any of them Nest/Hive/Worcester Wave but they are all low voltage and do not integrate with multi-zoned systems.

We have 3 zones with individual thermostats so it wouldn't fly.

I'm surprised - I thought at least one of them did multi-zone. Anyway, there is a third contender - Tado - which I have, and I believe is better (was better at the time for me). It can do multi-zone, and recently it introduced smart control valves for radiator.

Basically, it works by replacing the main thermostat with its own smart one, which is linked to presence detection on the phone (using an app and its location function) but also it "models" your home heating so it learns how much time it takes to heat up; and it also links to weather reports too. Its location feature automatically sets the temperature. For example if you're hundreds of miles away, it will go to a minimum, eg about 4 deg C; but if you're only a mile away it will set the temperature to be a few degrees below the normal you've set it at. And it will sense when you're coming home and turn the heating on.

Smart they may be, but all these systems do is turn the heating down/off when you're not in. If you stay indoors 24/7 through the winter they won't save anything. Its handy if you're in and out during the winter evenings, or if you occasionally stay over at a friend's house etc.