Just wondering?
Do you also save money by walking everywhere, instead of taking trains, buses, taxis, planes, etc?

could you not save up to £200 and turn your heating on yourself when you get in and turn it off when you go out ? Or is it not fashionable to do that anymore ?

Valuable input which has never been pointed out before on the Nest/Hive threads !

Yes. In the same way you light a coal fire when you get up or get in, walk to work, watch a 23" CRT television and not use the internet, use a nokia feature phone etc etc etc...

Premium product for people who want the flexibility and can afford it. It's not going to save you £200 on your gas bill and I don't think anyone who buys it is under the illusion that it is. :stuck_out_tongue:

Couldn't agree more, I am not looking for huge savings an don't expect to repay its self back any time soon, but like with most gadgets, its about convince and improvement to everyday life and comfort, also adds to the home automation I am working on :smile:

Its just me and the wife at the moment, so house is empty in the day, we also like to go away a lot. Next weekend is a prime example of a use case for us. Leave saturday morning, turn off heating, return sometime Sunday dont know what time exactly. 1hr away from home turn on heating and hot water, current set up: leave it on auto all weekend, will come on at 5:30 - 6:30am (same for weekends when we don't work) and then again 4:30 - 6 and 9-:9:30) granted only talking a few penny's saving. But it will improve living comfort over our current system.

Most people who buy this arent under the impression they are going to be saving huge amounts of money, its for the cool looking device on the wall and controlling from a phone, so your either willing to pay £200 or not, no point going on about it, the same could be said for cars, clothes or any other item. Can get cheaper, but its a lifestyle choice!

Thanks OP. Great price. Mine is now installed.

is the nest better than the hive? do they use wireless tech to connect to your internet or do they need hard wiring to the connection?

Random post of the year

could you not save up to £200 and turn your heating on yourself when you get in and turn it off when you go out ? Or is it not fashionable to do that anymore ?

Mine arrived today and I fitted it this afternoon, nice bit of kit, very pleased so far. Thanks for the deal.

You dont know what my interests are, dont make assumptions. When I leave the house for a visit to even something like Sainsburys, I check and sometimes double check everythings off before I set my alarm and off I go out. If you work away for 3 weeks never mind a few hours shopping, and you seriously dont check everything in your house before you go, then I have no words for that. If you need help with a forgetful memory thats you cant even check things in your house, then leave a spare key with your mum, dad, friend or whatever to check it for you.... if you remember that is.

​you're right it doesn't have geo location as standard, but using IFTTT (if this then that, Google it) you can set up heating to come on/ off by your location or a load of other triggers.

Ironically, the hot water tank scenario actually works very well for us as we have Solar Panels.
Any unused solar generated electricity is used to power the electric immersion tank heater for free. I also heat it to about 55 deg C and then down mix it using a thermostatic mixer valve (with cold water) to a comfortable temperature.
Between the months of March to October I actually turn off the hot water heating completely, boosting very rarely if a couple of dull rainy days ( you Know ... summer! :neutral_face: )

Now I would love one of these gadgets and this is a good price. But to be honest, I set the Central heating thermostat to 18.5C and turn the heating to constantly on, and let it do its thing. It works a treat.

That said .... gona order one anyway cuz its got flashy lights and can be controlled from out of space with a mobile ... Or ..

Cuz I am just Sad :confused:

NB: Waldolf your point is very valid and I totally agree :man:

Family would! Text alert if it goes off whilst I'm away from home gives me a chance to get someone to check the house.

Extreme example, would you drive to work if it was two seconds away? Most likely not, he has a very valid point you spend x amount to save yourself a few seconds turning it on and off (lets not forget that thing called a set timer as well). You drive to work to save yourself a few hours (depending on how many miles you work from your house obviously).

Its a gadget for a bit of fun, not much more to be honest.. not that I wouldn't get one, I think they are nice little gadgets

Hear, hear! I never quite understand it when people say something is a waste of money just because it's not something they would be willing to pay for. I probably wouldn't (couldn't) drop £150k on a Ferarri but I wouldn't consider somebody who did to waste their money. At this rate the next thing you will hear is why buy a house when a flat will do and so on. Live and let live I say

​If like most people holidays are taken in the summer, then the heating won't be on.

And if people are justifying the "get a tank of hot water" scenario to justify this device (again something directly from the sales blurb), then that's just ironic. Having stored hot water is the least efficient method. Those people should be looking at combis if energy saving is a priority.

Yes, there are a narrow set of circumstances when remotely controlling the heating may be advantageous. But citing very rare events (forgetting to turn heating off), or events that are insignificant (heating on or off whilst out for a few hours) are not reasons. That's just falling for the sales pitch and justifying a £200 spend on a 'maybe' event. That's not money saving.

Well, it's the only real way to be safe unfortunately, due to the insistence of every vendor having their own silo'd ecosystem reducing interoperability with other IoT devices. Until an agreed upon, open standard is established, it's kind of a dice roll jumping in to these devices right now.

Also, Nest looks a damn sight better than Hive's ugly thermostat.

I plumped for the Hive 2 as a Black Friday deal. I needed one that could work from batteries as the old thermostat was in a daft place and the Nest needs a plug socket if not wired. I work irregular hours and travel a fair bit with work, so the flexibility of being able to turn on the heating via my iPhone so it's nice and warm when I get home is great! Looking forward to adding door and motion sensors to the system as well - so I get an alert if they go off when I am out.

I remember on the heat link there are another set of contacts for the hot water, I'm guessing you'd have to run 2 or 3 new wiresfrom the gen3 heatlink in order for it to control the water side.

If you already have a 2nd gen Nest installed, how difficult would it be to install this yourself?

As a renter is there any way I can get a system like this?

Installed mine myself, fantastic product.

The heatlink provided with Nest Thermosat connect to the boiler, but also can supply 12V down existing thermostat wiring to power the Nest

Greatest peice of Heating kit i have ever used...Love it.

you are on a website where a lot of people like to save their pennies, maybe you go on holiday for a fortnight and forget to turn the heating down, is that tangible? There's more to it than saving as well, arriving home to a warm house or enough hot water for a bath for example. If it's not for you that's great, strange if you can't fathom how others might find it worthwhile though.

This was a great gadget for me and definitely made good savings in the first year, I work to a random shift pattern and so the "learn my routine" part of it would never work for me, which is where the geofencing and iphone apps came in handy. As soon as I was within say a 15km radius of home it would pop the heating on for a nice welcome home on a late shift.

But I can see how people with more fixed routines would not benefit much from this beyond a standard programmer setup.

1988 was a great year.

Couldn't agree more, I am not looking for huge savings an don't expect to repay its self back any time soon, but like with most gadgets, its about convince and improvement to everyday life and comfort, also adds to the home automation I am working on :smile:

Its just me and the wife at the moment, so house is empty in the day, we also like to go away a lot. Next weekend is a prime example of a use case for us. Leave saturday morning, turn off heating, return sometime Sunday dont know what time exactly. 1hr away from home turn on heating and hot water, current set up: leave it on auto all weekend, will come on at 5:30 - 6:30am (same for weekends when we don't work) and then again 4:30 - 6 and 9-:9:30) granted only talking a few penny's saving. But it will improve living comfort over our current system.

Most people who buy this arent under the impression they are going to be saving huge amounts of money, its for the cool looking device on the wall and controlling from a phone, so your either willing to pay £200 or not, no point going on about it, the same could be said for cars, clothes or any other item. Can get cheaper, but its a lifestyle choice!

£134 on Amazon. Pay an extra fiver and save on headaches with Npower.

​That's exactly what I mean. You are just quoting the marketing blurb with that "going out" scenario.

Yes you can do that, but there won't be any tangible savings.

Pretty good deal, I'd advise that you should put nest/hive all these other IoT devices behind their own subnet separated from your regular LAN just because right now it's still kind of the wild west where security is somewhat questionable right now.

I bought a similar product called Tado. It comes in wonderfully handy when you have kids in the house who turn up the heating to a ridiculous temperature when you work 25 miles away from home. Or say, if in your incredibly busy working life, you may dash out of the door and forget you've left the heating on - no problem; go to your phone and switch it off. Or you may wish to use the all the clever features of the Nest or Tado or Hive... I dunno? Or maybe you just still want to live in 1988?

can you sign up to npower buy the device and then cancel the contract within 14 days or whatever?

.....Might be a goer

I've yet to see any published actual verifiable savings from this or similar devices, compared to a traditional programmer and thermostat and TVR set up.

Everyone just quotes the sales and marketing blurb.

The fact is, most people have regular comings and goings and traditional constructed homes, so see no benefit of this type of device. They just love to have "an app for that"

yes its cheap but a reason to be with Npower no chance, cheaper better customer service companies out there.

Cold - they could give me gold ingots and it not be worth being with that shower!!!

:man:




(PS - havent actually voted cold - before the brigade comes out !:smiley: )

I didn't have a thermostat until now so it was either on or off on a timer, generally in winter for 2 hours in the morning and 6 hours in the evening. Its a 3 story house so does take a bit of heating to get up to temperature.
With the Nest it knows how long it will be to preheat the house to the desired temp and will switch off when reached or I leave for work/go to bed. It seems to heat for a few hours in the afternoon to reach my temp and then trickles on and off in the evening to maintain it, I wonder if its because its easier to warm up to temp in the afternoon as ambient is warmer? It also knows the local weather and outside temperature so changes the warm up time based upon the house temp and outside temp. I guess I've gone from the dark ages to something very modern, hence why I'm so impressed but previous thermostat or not its still very convenient and clever :smiley:

But £129 is a bit more sensible. Especially when a basic 7-day wired digital timer costs £60

If you're looking to upgrade from a simple analogue timer the price isn't too crazy in comparison.

Thanks. I'll use the existing wiring and make sure the boiler end is attached to the 12v output on the heat link box.

That seems to be working quite well for you, but as a side note, 6-8 hrs heating a day? do you live at the north pole ?

Mine is uk retail box

It does log the time your heating's been running and show with the nest leaf when you're saving money. Ive gone from an average of 8 hours heating per day to around 6 hours since installing the nest so I'm saving 25% gas compaired to before I fitted it. Im sure savings will be less as the weather warms up but so far so good for me.

I currently have my boiler in loft with a salus programmer and rf stat under the stairs. Iv been looking at these for almost a year but don't know if it will really save me that much. I have timer during morning timer during evening and it works well. Does mean I have to go press boost now and again. Not with nPower so if price drops around £130 mark everywhere I might be tempted.

can anyone tell me does this npower one come in the standard uk retail box or is the box npower branded?

Quidco states 'Shop at npower boiler and central heating and earn up to £60 cashback' although can't see the T&C's. Would be great to get £60 cashback on this purchase!

I paid £199 from Currys with fitting. Guess if you can fit it yourself then it's a bargain

That was kind of my point. £200 for a cool looking dial is not good sense. I'm not against ones that let you know how much energy your using and how to save money etc, but these ones really are a gimmick.

Well if that's the case why not just stick to a timer. £200 up.

If I knew I was going out I wouldn't have it on in the first place, that's a waste of heat/energy. I'm not against any thermostats, I'm against wasting money or throwing money away for the sake of it however.

Really tempted. I was wondering, the thermostat needs a 12v supply if you don't want to have to keep charging the battery. I already have an analogue thermostat (honeywell wheel thing), would this already have a power supply? If it's not powered, could I use the existing wire used for completing the circuit when it calls for heat to send the 12v though? The nest thermostat wouldn't need it as it sends its signal wirelessly? Still need to convince the wife, but it has amazing reviews.

One of the best features of this is that it learns how long your house takes to get warm.

So if you want the house to be at 19.5 deg at 07:00 it will fire up the boiler to get the house warm in advance - knowing how it it will take.

Great device... not worth me upgrading though

Just bought one for £199 from JL and its being fitted Saturday, but just ordered one of these as £129 is a no brainier, just wish could get it delivered by Sat for when our electrician is in doing some other work.

I've got the first gen and its great, there's an app called ifttt (if this then that) which will enable geofencing so that the thermostat can switch off when you leave your home area or switch on when you leave work etc. lots of options with the app

Not strictly true, download an app called IF (by IFTTT) and you can set up location based control as well as min/max parameters, notifications on temp, motion, etc... its really rather useful :smiley:

I ordered one when it was posted last month and am really happy with it.

Ah, my mistake :smiley:

i have the 3rd Gen it is a nice bit of kit, especially now you can heat your water. I use the Boost feature all the time.

Just to add to the above,it doesn't do geo locating. It'll set itself to away once it realises the house is empty but it won't do this based on where you are with your phone. It won't turn on when you're driving home from work,for example, unless you take it off away via your phone or the thermostat isn't set to away and the schedule means it needs to heat.

Does it required wire connection from the boiler or does it have RF.

thanks for the heads up. looking to change energy supplier soon so will see how npower compares to others

More info here:
https://nest.com/uk/thermostat/meet-nest-thermostat/

You can control it with your mobile phone and it can learn your routine. It can also detect when you're moving away or coming towards your home to either start or shut down your heating system.

Thanks. So how do these differ to a standard thermostat? I've heard about these but never actually understood their benefits.

So does this price include the installation charge? How exactly does this work? Will it work with any type of boiler?