Hive Active Heating – take control of your heating and hot water

“You could be making origami, from a slice of beef pastrami…”

Sound familiar?

(The lyrics, not the actual doing. If you do do origami with cold meats though, please email me your pictures and I will share them.)

Belle has a rather annoying habit of picking up TV ad jingles and singing them endlessly until they are burnt into your brain for ever and ever and her latest favourite is the advert for Hive, the clever thing that lets you control your heating and hot water remotely.

This is the ad, but be warned, it’s catchy. (Although far less annoying than having ‘washing machines last longer with Calgon’ stuck in your head.)

The idea behind Hive Active Heating is that essentially we are not terribly good at managing our hot water and heating. This feels a little harsh but is actually very true, and only to be expected really when there are so many other things to juggle, like getting everybody up and dressed and out of the house with matching shoes on. I was out for about 20 minutes the other day before I realised I had my jumper on back to front, so I understand the pressure only too well.

When you’ve got all this going on, it’s easy to do things like leave the house with the heating on full blast or, conversely, forget to set it to come on at all, and have to come home from work to a freezing cold house. Neither are ideal. With Hive you can adjust your heating and hot water remotely, switch it on and off, turn it up or down, set up schedules – the world of central heating is your virtual oyster.

Hive active heating app #sp

This video sums it up pretty well, plus the family in it have really lovely stained glass and flooring in their hallway. (I think I must be getting old; I have become rather obsessed with pointing out attractive stained glass features lately.)

Now obviously this heating magic is complex, so you do need to pay a one-off fee of £199 for the Hive Active Heating kit, but for this you get:

  • State of the art wireless thermostat, receiver and hub
  • Free app and online dashboard to remotely control your heating and hot water via phone, tablet and laptop
  • Professional installation by a British Gas engineer

You only pay this once, you don’t need to switch energy supplier as it works for everyone, and Hive reckon that you could save up to £150 a year on your bills because you are using your heating more efficiently. This means that you could recoup the set up costs really quickly and help to insulate yourself a bit too from ever increasing energy costs.

Sounds like a good deal to me.

Do you use Hive? I’d love to hear about how you are getting on with it or about any other energy saving tips you have.

Disclosure – this is a sponsored post.

 

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2 Comments

  1. Chloe
    31 January, 2014 / 2:15 pm

    Where the hell is the lyrics to the song????

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