Be Excellent To Each Other

Best get those baubles ready Asfish!

Not chance there will be any left by then Anyhow that issue is nothing compared to his latest stunt, I fear for my wife's sanity at the moment

So just over 2 weeks in and its fallen over

Came home after a day out and got my phone out to boost the heating, I get a "Heating Offline" message

So try a few things the app suggests and nothing works, so called Hive. To their credit my call was answered in 2-3 mins by a human with good English.

There then followed 35 mins of me pressing buttons, rebooting things and reporting on the blinking patterns and colors of various lights.

In the end I said enough as nothing was working, I asked them to send somebody out. Was put on hold to be given some vague promise of a call back re a engineer

So I kicked off told them it was less that 30 days old, that i have young kid and pregnant wife and wanted a firmed up date

Have a engineer around tomorrow 12-6 with a confirmation call 30 mins before he gets here.

Heating is very restrictive once this goes down, only option is to turn in fully on or off by a button on the the receiver, still only a day to put up with it.

£5 to your favorite charity says you don't.

My heating is working fine tonight.

Curse your doubt casting

I just called them again and spoke to a different guy and pretended I couldn't remember the appointment time

Just wanted to check the last person wasn't just fobbing me off, he said I have an engineer booked in so guess i have to wait now.

Great but I bet you can't manage it from a smart phone can you..........well neither can I right now

So's mine, for the first time in nearly 2 weeks now that the gas valve has been replaced. The funny thing is we didn't really notice the house being much colder without heating. Yay concrete walls.

18 is fine. I'm not home.

16 better.

My flat is 21°C even with no heating on. The guy downstairs lives in a sauna.

Free heat! Awesome

Fine in winter (for the most part). Summer is pretty horrible.

Have they been yet?

Yes he turned up at 1.30pm.

4 hours later he left having replaced everything 3 times and still nothing works, they can't get things to connect to each other.

I even shut down all the wireless connections on my router and that made no difference.

So money back at the least and anything else I can get out of them.

The guy who came today showed me that I can have timed heating just no thermostat function, that will be fine as I'm off for the next 2 weeks

So Nest in the New Year I guess

Babe you saved£300 yet?

Babe?

something we should know?

I called them today to see what they have proposed to move this forward

They were going to send another engineer out today but we went to see Santa with my son and I didn't want to have to be rushing home

So I put them off to the 28th when they will try one more time.

EDIT: Fixed it, the guy moved the receiver that attached to the boiler and everything connected in 10 mins

Amazon have bith on deal! £135 nest 3rd gen, or £156 hive with installation.

Go nest? Nest prettier

Nest is far prettier, and easier to install (at least it was X years ago when I got one).

i have Hive.. it just works. Might get more add ons

Nest is also supposed to be a bit better in terms of learning, not sure how well this works with a standard set up where you have one thermostat in the house though.

Also look to be a lot more 3rd party devices for Nest although I find many are US only or still at Kickstarter stage.

Sometimes wish I had got Nest, but as said Hive just works so unless it blows up I won't change it.

Still pleased with our Hive.

It's buzzin'.

Late to the party, but Evohome is still the best for UK systems because it replaces TRVs with two-way controllers. Up to 12 zones. Can also do zone valving and water - but not water in a combi, the idiots.

Even more idiots, the newer Nest ripoff Lyric can't do all the fancy stuff that makes Evohome stand out.

Spendy, though.

I still don't get these things.

It's a thermostat you can turn on from your phone (or Google Home and stuff like that). It works out when to turn the heating on to get your house to the temperature you want it.

That's about it. Posh thermostat that's a little more efficient than a "normal" timer.

Yeah, but only a little more efficient? I just don't understand the need for them. Don't get me wrong... People can spend their money on what they want but for me, I just don't see the point of them over the normal timer. I have a normal timer and it works just fine and I don't have to think about it.

I have no idea how effeciant, to be honest, I don't remember what I used to pay.

But if I go out for the day, or go on holiday, or whatever, the house just deals with that.

if the temperature you want your house at is 20°c, and you set the thermostat to that, what does the phone do? Can you control each room seoeeately? That'd be handy.

Evohome can do lots of rooms, but it's pricey.

You can use your phone to adjust the temperature - whoo!

Nest (maybe others, dunno) knows where your phones are and if they've all left the house (and it can't see or hear anyone moving around) it'll turn the heating off, and turn it on again when you're on your way home.

Ah, that's clever. I guess this will be the norm at some time in the future, when we're all dressed like the Jetsons.

Evohome is only pricy until you decide you want a second zone after all and, oh, that's another 180 quid nest.

Evohome starter pack and an 8 pack of radiator valves covered the house in Manchester - 6 zones.

How much is that in nests?

A hidden saving is not having to leave a radiator un-valved, because the demand is only there when a radiator dictates, just need to make sure you have a bypass valve.

I do realise the time to recoup the investment is (currently) "not short" however. We certainly didn't in the less than a year between fully setting it up and selling it again.

Now we have an oil-fired boiler with water tank as a second zone and half the radiators not TRVd. I really need to spend the cash again before winter.

Wait, it does zoned heating by mechanically adjusting rad output? That seems a bit...hacky.

It really depends on how you use your heating. I have mine on at various times over winter, so we can boost the heating or turn it one from anywhere.

Echo also lets you do these things as well

I get emails from Hive telling me things about my heating each month, it told me that in June my average temperature was higher than average, heating is turned off at the moment!

For me, it was an improvement before I changed my boiler the thermostat was on the wall downstairs in the main corridor, so if you set the house to be 23 and left it on all the time, you just roasted as the corridor would struggle to get to or hold that temperature so the heating was on all the time.

With the new boiler I had a stupid wheel with little teeth you had to use a pen to set the one\off time, also had a wireless thermostat which was an improvement but still shit. It was impossible to change temperatures, the only person to manage it was my son when he was 2. He changed the target to 18 degrees so the heating wouldn't come on I had to turn it off as I couldn't change it back.

So Hive was just better as it fixed all the crap and gave me the smartphone access as well

How else could it work?

what? Heat distribution from a central point is a mechanical process. Unless you're advocating a return to a fire in every room I don't understand.

Radiator goes below programmed threshold. Radiator opens valve. Radiator tells controller HEAT ME THE FJCK UP. Controller tells boiler HEAT THE FUCK UP. Boiler heats the fuck up. Radiator goes above threshold. Radiator tells controller WOAH THERE MISSY. Controller tells boiler STFU. Boiler turns off. Radiator closes valve.

Except it's any combination of radiators with per-zone programming.

Whole-house heating and/or open-loop modulation via TRVs, that's hacky.

I can't think of another way it would work, but it still seems hacky. I don't like the idea of it being mechanical, though I appreciate that's the only way.

I get it, but I don't want it. We have a nice electronic controller that I can set so that the heating comes on up to three times per day, thermostatic valves on all the rads and a master thermostat in the hall (I admit it's probably not the best place, but once it's set correctly, the rooms get warm enough).

We also have a smart meter and a monitor. We used the monitor for about 2 days, and it showed us that demand went up if we switched the kettle or any other electrical appliance on. I FUCKING KNEW THAT ALREADY.

I'm resisting the introduction of any 'Internet of Things' devices as I don't want the Russians hacking my freezer and defrosting all my oven chips, etc.

From work I can turn the heating off when my wife and kids are at home.

Then text "put a fucking jumper on".

You can also get a Smart Duvet and control the temperature of both sides of the bed independently. Oh, and the bed makes itself too, apparently.

FUCK OFF

$200.

MUST

RESIST

Don't just buy one, wonder if you ever have to change the covers

EDIT reading a bit I see this works with your existing bedding, $200 isn't bad them claim it will be closer to $500 at launch

Yeah we thought about getting one of those. Problem is the control box which connects separately and you have to find room for at the bottom of the bed. Plus not convinced how well it'll actually work.

It will stop my wife's cold feet coming over my side of the bed October - March so well worth the money!

Can it chill as well as heat?