Hive Smart Heating Thermostatic Radiator Valve (TRV) with Smartphone Compatibility, White

WOW! – If you have Hive, these are a Game Changer – Big Review
First of all, these are thermostats that switch on and off your radiator. Your radiator, must be equipped with a thermostatic valve as these are just replacements for the top half of the valve.These do not come with any app, so you will need to have the Hive Basic Kit already installed, which consists of Hub, Receiver and Thermostat.The Hub plugs into your router and allows you to control things remotely via the internet.The Receiver connects to your boiler and switches it on and offThe Thermostat measures the temperature in the room its in and communicates with the hub and receiver to turn the boiler (and pump) on when required.When you have hive basic system you can control hot water and heating. The thermostat though, only switches on the heating if the room that its in goes below a certain temperature. The disadvantage though, is that it turns on heating for the whole house, even though just that room needs heat. This is a waste of energy, thats where these valves really come into their own.These radiator valves act as additional thermostats for the room that they are in. They can then communicate with the main system thermostat to get the heating switched on, and heat just that radiator! – no need to heat the rest of the house!You will see many bad reviews for the Hive system, these are dated 2022, 2023 etc, but this year (2024) Hive did a major upgrade to their app and it now works REALLY well. You can add as many smart radiator valves to your system as you want and control them all individually. By Control I mean, you can manually (via the app) switch them on and off. You can also set a schedule for that valve (for example, if you have a room like an office in your house that you may only occupy for weekday mornings, you can only heat that room weekday mornings by setting the schedule, it will then be off all the rest of the time saving you money! You can also boost a room for an hour or two or just 15 minutes, if you need some extra heat.The valves have two adaptors inside to fit onto your existing valve when the “head part” is removed. These probably fit the majority of radiator valves. I had Honeywell and Drayton, and the same adaptor fitted both valves. When you have removed your old valve head and put on the new smart one, you insert the batteries and it goes into pairing mode and you add a device on your hive app and within about 2 minutes, its added as another heating zone to your app. You can name it whatever you want, like “Bathroom”, “Kitchen”, “Hallway” etc. I was surprised how many walls it would go through in different parts of the house, but could still pair with the hub…. impressive!I cannot stress enough, this system is overkill if you only have 2 or 3 rooms in your house. I have 12 rooms and so theres some rooms I hardly ever go in, so why heat them all day when they are empty? – So I will have bedroom heated 30 minutes before I get up, bathroom too. Then the system will be off all day while I am at work. Then about 1 hour before I get in, the living room will heat up plus the kitchen and dining room (bedrooms still off) – then about an hour after i get in, the dining rom and kitchen will turn off, so I am only heating the living room, until about 9pm, when bedroom and bathroom will switch on, I will leave the living room about 10, when it will switch off (on the schedule I programmed) and I will go up to the bedroom and bathroom which are already warm! – They will switch off an hour later.So, instead of heating 12 radiators every time I wanted my heating on, I now heat one, two or three and the boiler is happy because those radiators are so much hotter than before because the water doesnt have to be pumped around the whole house!Its difficult for me to see how much saving there is on my Gas bill yet as my smart meter is not working well. But my September gas bill was half the price of my May one. And I think these months have similar outside temperatures.If you dont want to change your whole house to smart valves, thats fine. Just turn down the temperature on the other rooms otherwise they will always be on whenever any valve turns on the main thermostat. If you can live with a few chilly rooms that you seldom use, it will save additional outlay on smart valves, they are not cheap!Here’s a few tips for people who already have the valves:The smart valve must be set to heat on demand (Inside the settings for the valve on the app) if you want it to switch on the boiler when the temperature on that valve drops.The boiler will only switch on if the main thermostat is not switched “off”. Having the thermostat on schedule on manual is fine, but if you have it “off” it switches everything off.If the valve is set to 22C and the room temperature is 21.5C – the app will say the radiator is “heating up”, but its not! – it will not switch on the boiler. It will wait until the valve gives a room temperature of 21.2 or less. (0.8C below the set temperature) – You may think its broken, but its just waiting for the temperature to go low enough. When it gets to 21.2, if the boiler is off (not heating but switched on) – the main thermostat will go into “boost” mode and keep the boiler on until the desired temperature is reached.If you advance the schedule on the main thermostat zone and consequently a radiator demands heat, the thermostat will go into boost mode, but when its finished it will return to schedule, but it will be the original time, it will not be advanced to the next schedule anymore. (maybe a bug that will get fixed soon)Note: If you set the valve to 21C, it will heat up and switch off when its reached 21C, however, the hot water will remain in the radiator, so the room will continue heating, up to about 22 or 23 degrees. Then the temperature of the room will slowly drop as the water in the radiator goes cold, and the radiator will not begin heating again until the temperature falls to 20.2C – Therefore a setting of 21, actually means a range of 20.2 – 23C!AS I said before I am not sure how long it will take for these valves to pay for themselves. It really depends on where you live, the insulation of your house etc. For me, I would expect the 8 valves that I have bought (about £480) should pay for themselves in about a year as I have many rooms which are seldom used and previously my gas bill was very highDon’t forget to “Like” my review if its been helpful!

Installed on every radiator now
Previously the flat was controlled with a single thermostat in the living room. There was never enough heat in the bathroom while at the same time the bedroom would overheat. We’d also have to turn on every radiator if we wanted to make just one room warmer – or use an expensive portable electric heater.We realised if we were going to do this we’d need them on all the radiators. Installing them on every radiator is needed for independent control of each room. To run the bathroom towl rail for longer without overheating the rest of the flat, for example, we needed all the other radiators to have a smart valve that can turn them off. So while you could just install one or two of these, you won’t have the same level of control.Most our rooms have two radiators and it was easy to link valves in the app to make a zone that works as one. Interestingly the valves have their own room temperature sensors inside them, which is handy for reducing the amount of kit needed – but I also wondered how reliable it would be. I was concerned as well because we had to go against the instructions and put some of them on radiators that are partly covered by furniture. Well, despite this, they’re working very well and no issues there.The individual control of each room is great, we have a properly warm bathroom now, and I can turn the heating up in the living room without making anywhere else hotter, etc. It’s a much more comfortable flat now and overall wasn’t too expensive to upgrade. The alternative to solving our cold bathroom was to run a new electric circuit to the bathroom and install an additional electric heater – which would have cost about the same amount of money and not given any other smart features.I find the valves are quiet. Much quieter than the ones in my friend’s house. A brief soft buzz, that’s it. They learn how much to move to open the valve over time and this makes them get quieter once they’re settled in. Moving less saves the batteries too.So why 4 stars? They were pretty difficult to install. I don’t know why but getting it to screw on was very awkward and took a long time messing about with some of them. It didn’t really get any easier either, in fact the last one was the worst! I’m good at DIY usually and this was a pain. Thankfully though it’s a one time pain as once they’re on you can change the batteries without removing the valves, just pop the cap off. That’s a relief. The app seems to monitor battery life for you as the battery status can be checked for each valve in the app. Interestingly they say not to use rechargeables for these, but apparently the batteries will last a while.They also take a bit of time to do anything. When I tell the app to boost the heat in a room it can be a few minutes before I hear the valve activate and then the radiator starts heating up. I have no idea why it waits so long. Still, it’s not excessively long, but good to know when you’re testing them out the first time and might be expecting a quick response.You can turn them and adjust the temperature by hand. But that’s all you can do by hand, everything else like schedules and stuff happens in the app.They only appear to come in white which is a bit limiting. But they do look nicer in person than the photos I think.Overall, I’m very happy and they’re working well. The difficulty fitting them was an issue though and somewhere they could greatly improve what’s otherwise a good product.