Hive

Upgraded the heating system today with a Hive thermostat/controller.  

Amazingly the receiver fit on the same backplate as the old timer, and the thermostat fit on the same backplate as the old thermostat.  So it all went relatively easily.

The main reasons for installing this are environmental and economic, although if everyone reduces energy consumption there is less chance we'll have blackouts this winter and that is a motive too.

Our old system had a very hard to use timer in a cupboard and a fairly basic thermostat so wasn't very flexible.  That meant we were probably using more energy than we needed as it was tricky to reduce energy use when we weren't there, or to "top up" the heating if we were too cold.

The Hive is much more flexible, has simple boost options, and can even be controlled remotely from our phones.  So hopefully this will let us keep a much lower default use and just top up heat when we actually want/need it.  

It will be a bit hard to measure the exact impact, but it's not very expensive compared with energy bills today, and we expect our energy bill will go up a lot in April, so with even a 5% saving it will pay for itself in less than 2 years, and many users report saving 25% or more (validated by the Consumers Association so there's some real data to support it).