Review: Hive Smart Heating and Hot Water

Over the last few months, I have been slowly turning our house into a smart home. I started with an Alexa, then I added more Alexas so we had one in every room plus smart bulbs in every room then recently, with the winter weather taking a turn for the worst, I decided to bite the bullet and install a Hive smart heating and hot water device, seeing as they were discounted in Amazon’s Black Friday sale.

The Hive smart device allows you to see and control your heating and hot water from wherever you are via your smartphone and you can hook it up to Alexa too. This is a huge bonus for anyone who doesn’t want to manually change the settings or for when you are out of the home and don’t want to waste energy heating an empty house which ultimately helps you save money!

I purchased the option for professional installation as I really didn’t want to make any horrific mistakes!

When the box arrived it contained the Wireless Thermostat (pictured below) and the hub which plugs into your router, along with the usual instruction manual and documentation including instructions for arranging the installation which was quick and simple to do via the website.

Only a Hive thermostat is installed by a trusted British Gas engineer, no matter who supplies your energy, and I have to say that our engineer was quick and efficient. The engineer brought along the receiver which enables the thermostat and hub talk to each other in order to control the boiler.

He made sure I had downloaded the Hive app and gave me a quick demonstration on how to use it to control the temperature of my heating and hot water, turn on the boost for a quick burst of heat as well as showing me how to set up a schedule so that it automatically comes on at selected times. You can program the Hive via the Wireless Thermostat or via the app which is easy and intuitive to use.

So, how have I been getting on? So far I have really enjoyed having the Hive look after the heating and hot water in my home. I have it set to keep the house at 20°C from morning to evening, turning off overnight with a similar schedule for the hot water so we can enjoy hot showers in the morning and evening.

I have not experienced any problems with the Hive so far at all and would certainly recommend it to anyone looking to keep a closer eye on their bills or energy use. Everything about the Hive has been easy to set up and use. I am happy to award it 5 out of 5 stars.