On 12/09/2020 at 21:40, Lady Elanore said:

Google seems to find everything I own!! Give it a go if you have android 

We live in a fruit-based computer and phone household, so won’t work!

 

Thanks anyway!

@SuperbTWM, thanks, I don’t have to worry about a mess if I go for Nest, as I can put the controller where the current thermostat is:

 

 

The switch is the Senic Hue with Gira E3 surround in UK backbox; we have normal Gira switches for the bathroom and downstairs loo as they didn’t need Hue lighting, and the switches look the same.

 

@Lady Elanore, Nest can integrate with Philips Hue; I’m not sure if you can use the Nest app to control the lights, but they do work together if you start building the Nest with fire alarms, etc.

 

Cheers,

 

Nick

 

Edited 15 September, 20205 yr by Cubbington

I must admit I put the Hive thermostat in the living room as it's the only room in the house that I definitely want to be warm, although obviously you can put these things anywhere you want as they are RF linked. Funnily enough I find the temperature feels much more stable than in the 'approved' hall position where the previous thermostat used to live.

My original wired thermostat was in the hall. The Hive thermostat is in the lounge like yours. All of the other radiators have thermostatic valves on them and I have the system balanced,  it is gravity fed, so that they all appear to reach their set temperatures at about the same time that the Hive thermostat shuts off the boiler.

I have thought about wearing the thermostat around my neck so wherever I am in the house the temperature will be corrected  

I used a Nest thermostat before I moved away from the UK.

 

One main reason I went for Nest is that it supports "opentherm" which is a communications protocol used by many boilers. It's two wires (similar to a CAN bus system in a car) and the controller is wiresld to this.

 

The massive advantage being is rather than you just setting a mixed temperature on the boiler and the thermostat literally just turning it on and off (like a switch), via opentherm the thermostat can dynamically change the radiator (and hot water temp via the app). This is where you make real money savings. As if the house is cold it can blast the boiler up to heat up the house quickly but then run on for longer at a lower temp. I also found it much more comfortable in the house.

 

Then ability to change the radiator and hot water temp from the app was a big plus.

 

I also the had some cheap Bluetooth programmable TRV valves on the radiator for some individual room control.

 

Hive doesn't support this feature.

And also as a side note regarding smart home and bulbs etc.

 

I can highly recommend Home assistant on a raspberry pi if you're looking for a central control point (and app) for all your devices.

 

Also the option to ditch the hue bridge and buy a ZigBee dongle was a big plus for me (it's been more reliable, more responsive, can add bulbs, remotes and sensors from many different manufacturers and a much higher device limit).

 

On 13/09/2020 at 00:40, SuperbTWM said:

One downside of the nest though is its power requirement, for it to look neat and tidy on the wall you either have to chase the wall out or in my case, drill through from a cupboard on the other side of the wall. Otherwise you have an unsightly cable running up the wall unless you have a table to sit it on with the stand. The Hive being battery powered does not have this issue.

 

Not true.  If you have a 2 wire installation from original stat to boiler then you can use this to power the nest.  Obviously this wont work if you want it to be in a different location but I think you can unclip it and connect it elsewhere if you want to be able to move it around.  We have our nest installed with the 2 wire setup in the original location and it has worked fine.  You can link up a second stat to use as a temp sensor elsewhere if a better spread of heat is needed.  I'd argue that the rad valves are set wrong if this is the case.  

As for smart home stuff we are a Hue house.  Not the cheapest but it works well.  I have also got a couple of wifi light switches, one in the kitchen as hue downlighters are expensive and one in the garage linked to a zwave door sensor.  This is all powered by Home assistant with a couple of motion sensors thrown in for hall light control.  Also have harmony hubs for the living room and bedroom so we only have to use one remote for doing tv things.

Edited 21 September, 20205 yr by MarkyG82

3 hours ago, MarkyG82 said:

 

 

Not true.  If you have a 2 wire installation from original stat to boiler then you can use this to power the nest.  Obviously this wont work if you want it to be in a different location but I think you can unclip it and connect it elsewhere if you want to be able to move it around.  

Ok but the point I’m making is you can put the Hive anywhere with no consideration.
 

The Nest needs to be powered so you have to put a lot more time, effort and/or money into having it where you desire. 

How long does the battery last?  Planning on moving soon so will leave the nest wired in and get a replacement for the new house.  Just interested in the limitations of various systems much like the OP.

The battery on the nest is purely for back up reasons, it does work for a while, maybe an hour or 2 but pretty much instantly you lose remote access via the app and just get a warning message telling you it’s lost power. 

14 hours ago, SuperbTWM said:

The battery on the nest is purely for back up reasons, it does work for a while, maybe an hour or 2 but pretty much instantly you lose remote access via the app and just get a warning message telling you it’s lost power. 

 

Sorry I actually meant the hive battery?

 

I looked at these a while ago after the wife left so I could turn the heating on remotely an hour before I came home. All the big name brands were overly expensive and complicated for what I actually needed, so I bought a simple wireless remote thermostat off Ebay, downloaded the free app, and now I have complete control wirelessly from my mobile. I can turn the heating on and off, set a manual temperature, or set it to auto program mode if I choose from anywhere I'm working.

Total cost was a shade over £20 plus my labour for fitting.

 

 

Edited 24 September, 20205 yr by Rustynuts

I have Hive - fitted it myself which was fairly straightforward. 

 

Early days for me so haven't branched out in to the whole smarthome thing just yet, but may well in the future.

 

The Hive controller/thermostat as completely plastic and looks very cheap in my opinion - I have bought the official stand so it is not mounted to the wall and is on a table in my front room. The Nest controller is a thing of beauty -metal and glass and very tactile (and also can be stand or wall mounted). That said you can manage everything from the app on your phone so never need touch the controller at all once set up save for changing batteries.

 

The Hive is currently £130 from Amazon - discounted as it works with Alexa. 

 

 

 

 

The batteries in my older HIVE devices must be around 2 years or so and going strong. The thermostat runs for around 2 years with decent batteries, assuming it's not a million miles from the receiver I guess (ie not some weird cheapo ones from a petrol station)

Edited 24 September, 20205 yr by Lady Elanore

On 21/09/2020 at 11:25, MarkyG82 said:

 

 

Not true.  If you have a 2 wire installation from original stat to boiler then you can use this to power the nest.  Obviously this wont work if you want it to be in a different location but I think you can unclip it and connect it elsewhere if you want to be able to move it around.  We have our nest installed with the 2 wire setup in the original location and it has worked fine.  You can link up a second stat to use as a temp sensor elsewhere if a better spread of heat is needed.  I'd argue that the rad valves are set wrong if this is the case.  

As for smart home stuff we are a Hue house.  Not the cheapest but it works well.  I have also got a couple of wifi light switches, one in the kitchen as hue downlighters are expensive and one in the garage linked to a zwave door sensor.  This is all powered by Home assistant with a couple of motion sensors thrown in for hall light control.  Also have harmony hubs for the living room and bedroom so we only have to use one remote for doing tv things.

Have you got scenes working with the Hamony remote? We use a Harmony too (hopefully changing to Control4 at the weekend for the TV/HiFi), and I could only see individual bulb control when Hue was loaded on to both.

 

Seems to be a 50/50 split on Hive vs. Nest, so far...has anyone seen actual savings since having either fitted?

 

As an aside, I did a factory reset on the Hue system a few days ago, and was able to get all lights, sensors & switches on one hub, which has made it a lot nicer to use from the app, so brings it closer to integrating properly with Nest.

 

Cheers,

 

Nick

Edited 25 September, 20205 yr by Cubbington

4 hours ago, Cubbington said:

Have you got scenes working with the Hamony remote? We use a Harmony too (hopefully changing to Control4 at the weekend for the TV/HiFi), and I could only see individual bulb control when Hue was loaded on to both.

 

 

Not 100% sure. Set it up soo long ago.  We have 2 living room lights on the 2 left smart buttons and the TV backlight on the top right with the hallway lights grouped on the bottom right. Can dim and on/off as we like. Also have the TV backlight come on when turning on an activity with harmony. Works well.

 

@Rustynuts got a link for that stat?

Edited 25 September, 20205 yr by MarkyG82

44 minutes ago, MarkyG82 said:

 

 

 

@Rustynuts got a link for that stat?

 

I did look a few weeks ago a d that particular one wasn't available any more. I'll look again.

6 hours ago, MarkyG82 said:

 

 

 

@Rustynuts got a link for that stat?

 

This looks very similar.

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/184035992419
 

Just make sure you choose the correct option on the drop down menu. The £12ish one doesn't look to be wifi app control, the "Non Touchscreen" option is the one I'm thinking of which is similar to mine.

14 hours ago, Cubbington said:

has anyone seen actual savings since having either fitted?

 

 

 

I don't really see how a smart thermostat could save you a noticeable amount of money over a normal programmable thermostat other than if you always forgot to turn it down or off whenever you went out and plus the eather is different from one year to the next and so are the gas/electric prices so its hard to even tell. Its a bit like the smart meter con, if you are reasonably well educated you know that your tumble drier uses a lot of electric, so if you choose to use it anyway then seeing the useage on a smart meter isn't going to make you turn it off to save money.

 

I have turned off the auto scheduling and the motion sensors and 'auto away' features on my Nest as I really don't like the idea of the thermostat trying to guess how warm I want the house etc. I just want it to do what I tell it or stick to the schedule that I set.

 

 The main reason I bought my Nest is because it learns how fast the house heats up. Because our living room radiators are a bit over size it does warm up quick, especially with the door closed to the hallway.  Tried a few thermostats and with the overshoot in temperature plus the in built deadband it just went from a bit too warm to a bit too cold but the Nest does really well at guessing the residual heat given out and turns the heating off earlier. Plus, as mentioned above it looks a lot nicer than the Hive

Yeah I found the Nest very good at calculating how quickly the house heated up and cooled down. And so it remained at a steadier more comfortable temperature.

 

With the old "dumb" thermostat it would get really warm and then cold all the time.

 

As I said before, the advantage (and savings) with the Hive are when it's used with Opentherm. As the boiler temperature is controlled on demand rather than it being set at a fixed temperature.

 

And rather than just switching the boiler on and off it can continue to run at a low output (or just running the pump for longer).

 

A big safety feature is when it's linked to nest smoke detectors too. If they detect smoke or carbon monoxide they tell the thermostat to shut the boiler off.

Just now, Phil-E said:

Yeah I found the Nest very good at calculating how quickly the house heated up and cooled down. And so it remained at a steadier more comfortable temperature.

 

With the old "dumb" thermostat it would get really warm and then cold all the time.

 

As I said before, the advantage (and savings) with the Hive are when it's used with Opentherm. As the boiler temperature is controlled on demand rather than it being set at a fixed temperature.

 

And rather than just switching the boiler on and off it can continue to run at a low output (or just running the pump for longer).

 

A big safety feature is when it's linked to nest smoke detectors too. If they detect smoke or carbon monoxide they tell the thermostat to shut the boiler off.

 

For my boiler to support it I needed to buy some sort of wiring loom, presumably so it could modulate the burner directly but wasn't sure if this was going to work out as well as having a boiler that natively supported Opentherm.

 

It doesn't seem that popular though so I'm of the opinion that it can't make that much difference, once the system is up to temp the burner is only ticking over anyway so having the temperature(of the CH) even lower would probably involve the burner cutting in and out or running so low the efficiency falls off anyway. It might make the control slightly better in terms of temperature of the house but I don't think it would save any money. If it was a genuine breakthrough in technology all the latest new build houses would have it yet its been around for years and I havn't known anybody that has used it yet. 

Hive has an auto warm feature too, although it will only come on up to an hour earlier than the schedule 'on' time, I think they don't realise some of us live in older houses that leak heat at an indecent rate  

It's been implemented on boilers for years. Our boiler is now 10 years old and had it from new (boiler still going but don't live there anymore. It's rented out).

 

I believe many "dumb" thermostats use it too. I believe it's kinder in the boiler rather than just switching it on and off all the time.

 

I know we made savings switching from a normal thermostat to the nest.

 

But a lot of that may have been down to the greater flexibility of the programming it offered since we both mainly worked from home and I did home visits and could change it quickly on the fly. 

Thanks for the additional thoughts and experiences you’ve had.

 

I’ve found a local company that specialise in fitting smart/eco energy systems, so will contact them to discuss the options.

 

I’m leaning towards Nest again for the protect integration with their smoke alarms & Hue, and the learning facility to keep the house at a more constant temperature.

 

Will let you know how we get on!

 

Thanks again,

 

Nick