How refreshing to watch a video featuring real life examples of wiring and access issues instead of the sugar coated versions. Congrats on working the issues through.
Considering your not an electrician I’m seriously impressed with your thought process and understanding of these systems (As an electrician). Great video.
Me too! I love my viessmann boiler too I’ve got the combination vitodens 100 model eight years old now and super reliable very very cheap on the gas consumption to
Hi Cameron, your system WAS a gravity system but now isn't due to the pump feeding the the hot water cylinder. You should convert the system to an S-plan system. John ward has a good video on this.
I was wondering that, it looked like S Plan but without a second valve and without the valve's switched outputs controlling anything, definitely looks like it could be converted fairly easily!
@@jonathanInLondonUK That's what i had in my house before the coucil replaced my system with a combi boiler. Was wondering why there wasn't a valve also for the hot water tank? If heating is on the hot water tank will be roasting hot with wasted energy 😒
@@lifeismad2k7 Yep. The hot water circuit used gravity ("hot water rises") through 28mm pipes to heat the cylinder and just relied on the boiler thermostat to control the cylinder temp. In summer you could turn the boiler stat down, but in winter you'd get dangerously hot water. Now with modern low-water-content boilers, they want somewhere to "dump the heat" when they shut down. With Cameron's folks' system the pump can dump heat from the boiler to the cylinder. With a Y-plan system there's always a path open. For an S-plan you need a bypass valve somewhere so the pump can run to cool the boiler's heat exchanger when neither HW or CH are calling for water. Converting to an S- or Y-plan also needs a hot water cylinder stat. If there isn't an easy route to get a cable back to the boiler, you can get a wireless cylinder stat. This can all get a bit complicated, and I suspect that successive plumbers have just renewed pumps and valves "like for like" with the wiring never being addressed.
just installed Hive heating in our house. we have a more conventional combi boiler but we didnt know our worcester boiler required a live loop (a wire between the live and 1 pins on the backbox) but it works great!
Interesting, looks like the single channel receiver (i.e. the one for a combi) has "dry" contacts so by looping Live through to the "common" terminal you're then passing live to the switched output when the heating is to turn on. The receiver is basically a relay between common and the NO and NC contacts. Suppose that makes sense since it also allows the use of boilers that use low voltage or "volt free" contacts (where you'd connect these across common and the NC/NO terminals). The dual zone receiver I used doesn't have a common connection and instead just switches live to the outputs, suppose that's fine since in a system like this, the valves and pump are all designed for mains voltage, does mean that you wouldn't be able to use it with something that needs low voltage/volt free contacts without external hardware such as contactors.
love Hive - had it for just over 3 years - I never use the thermostat to control it - the app is so much easier. Mine is heating only as I have a combi boiler. Nice video.
Hi Cameron, Having just installed Hive Mini for Hot-water & Heating (on ‘S’ Plan Pressurised system Boiler) I concur with your findings and agree with your criticisms generally and you make some valid points, but I find you tend to speak a little too quickly for us ‘non Scots’ to follow easily. So I slowed playback speed to -0.75 to hear you more clearly. I encountered very similar historical crazy wiring and my suggestion is to first ensure that your wiring is put right and confirm its working properly, before installing Hive controls. That way you eliminate any system anomalies beforehand. Eg, I discovered my system would only fire up boiler when calling for Hot water first, it would not fire up boiler for heating alone and was therefore inefficient. So I went back to basics and systematically identified the connection of each wire and labelled it accordingly, noting what component it was connected to. It took a while, but I identified several redundant wires and eliminated wires that could have presented a problem. I discovered that parts of the circuit had been added/changed when a new boiler had been fitted some years previously, accounting for the inconsistencies. I found Hive installations on-line not too helpful and had to resort to Telephone help in order to fully pair the devices. Thanks for posting
As a British Gas engineer for 20 years and the company that promotes and installs the hive I’ve seen some dodgy wiring and installs in my time the system doesn’t no what it wants to be gravity or fully pumped it needs to be s or y plan 1 mid pos valve or 2 valves s plan one heating one hot water fully pumped that should have been done when the boiler was installed to meet the energy efficiency requirements and a cylinder stat is minimum requirement do enjoy the videos though you made the best of some very suspect wiring there
Thanks for uploading. As an aside, the wiring was such a mes and in such a unappealing location. Being an ex spark, I'm not surprised previous contractors did not want to lumbered with fixing it. An in and out job. But they should have told the owners.
The section about setting the receiver to gravity fed was just what I needed. Thank you. Your comments about the thermostat were spot on. Very hard to learn what to do when it shuts off all the time. Did you ever make a video about the app? I need to know what settings I need to allow for the gravity feed mode.
No problem! I haven't really used the app much to be honest (set it up on my parents' phones and haven't really used it since) but it didn't require any special configuration for gravity fed mode, setting it on the receiver was enough.
One thing I found when installing is the wiring diagram on the back of the receiver was wrong for by boiler. The switch to the room thermometer connection when connected to pin 3 was off when it should be on and live when it should be off. So I ended up connecting that wire to the terminal 5 labelled NC (not connected) After doing that by heating was controlled correctly and the Hive is working well.
I have used two nest heat links and both need to be replaced in 12 months, so now moving over to the Hive as I am thinking the hive will be alot more robust and reliable components , I would not and cannot recommend the Nest/Google for controlling your heating or hot water based on my experience and both Nest/Google heat links went faulty in winter months, not months you want to be without heating for days...also consider the additional cost of getting someone to replace the devices for you....
I ditched the Hive and went to Nest after a couple of years. The Hive thermostat started eating batteries and Hive replaced the thermostat free of charge as it was a known issue/firmware bug. Six months later the hub kept losing connection. Due to the fact that the thermostat and receiver continued to work I would only find out when I went to use the app. The thermostat and receiver were quite far apart but the hub was almost next to the stat and therefore it didn't make much sense that the hub connection kept getting lost. I prefer the Nest as the wiring center/receiver can use the old stat wiring to provide the wireless stat with 12v to prevent it needing a separate power supply.
Hi great 👍 thanks, just to check. We have heating and hot water, so weve bought the hive mini for heating and hot water. Do we need ro buy a hive hub aswell?
This was extremely useful. Your approach was thoughtful and considered for the view making it very easy to understand. Brilliant, I’ve subscribed!! Just a quick question however. I believe our old system (Oil Boiler) is also a gravity fed system with a single 2 port valve. But we also have a pump underneath the floor. How do you figure out if it really is a gravity fed system or has been converted to a S-Plan system? Many thanks
I connected this the same way to my Vitodens 050w and I accidentally pressed the “hot water boost” on the top of the thermostat display and it tripped everything and blew my Vitodens PCB off! I wondered why? Mind you I accidentally pressed the hot water boost before I hold on to the button which activates the gravity mode. It would have blew your pCB off if you accidentally pressed yours too..
This sounds like a wiring mistake to me. If you were to trigger hot water without gravity fed mode being enabled on a gravity fed system, the hot water would function as normal. If you were to trigger heating, all that would happen is that the valve would open but the pump wouldn't run and the boiler wouldn't fire. I demonstrate this at 26:32. What I suspect has happened in your situation is that you've somehow connected a neutral to the switched side of the receiver rather than a switched live. When you've turned on the hot water it will have caused a direct short between live and neutral causing a huge amount of current to flow which will have tripped breakers and blown fuses. This may not have completely killed the boiler's PCB, there is likely a fuse somewhere on the board that has blown.
Hi mate love the video! My house is currently getting loads of work done. Can I install the hive without internet? We won’t have internet for a couple months but want a hive while works getting carried out
If guests in the house push the Heat button on the receiver could they call for heat by overriding the system? If so recommend hiding the receiver away somewhere so they control it via the room thermometer or the app only, good idea? I guess you can lock control of that too so it can be remotely controlled from the app only. I'm not suggesting you hold the system to random from your parents just as I'm renting out the house I don't want students cranking it up to 32C when they're a little cold after midnight.
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hey Cameron sorry but I don't get how this controls the hot water. I got a very similar Viessmann combi boiler, which currently only turns on if I am actually using the hot water and it starts to flow when I open a tap, I don't need to press any buttons or set it to ALWAYS ON or anything like that. Is this something the Nest is not capable of? If I turn on hot water to ALWAYS ON, it will just start burning the gas even when there is no flow of water?
You have a combi boiler which heats water on demand, in which case you'd need the "Hive Active Heating" version. The system here has a conventional boiler with a hot water tank. Hot water is drawn from a tank that fills with cold water which the boiler then heats up. A timer needs to be set to schedule when the boiler is to heat the water tank to ensure it is warm throughout the day.
I have two questions: When I turn on the hot water, does the heating also turn on, is this normal? To have hot water in the kitchen, do I always have to turn on the hot water first using the remote control?
Who ever replaced that Consumer unit did a terrible job... I would have expected them to work out what the ? MCB was for as they should have tested everything before hand and worked it out. Wonder what other corners have been cut on the install. 🤔Then that wiring.. OFT!
There's a lot of red flags from that install - Apparently he "fitted the new board and then the RCDs kept tripping" (replacing an old rewireable MEM board) so clearly no testing had been done beforehand. They had to spend the night where their only power was an extension lead running from the garage which has a separate board. This was a apparently professional electrician as well. This is why I get so annoyed with the whole "don't touch electrics yourself, you must get an electrician" attitude. No disrespect to proper electricians but out of the 6 electricians I've used or seen the results of their work, I've only had one I was happy with. The others have either had extremely messy installs in new builds (including with mistakes/dangerous corners cut), my parents consumer unit install which is a bit of a mess, the downlights my parents had installed where some T&E was left bulging down from a badly filled hole in the ceiling causing my mum to sand through it(!) and then a circuit I arranged to have installed where they connected the neutral to the wrong neutral bar so it tripped the RCD as soon as any load was put on it (the guy doing the latter was even training his apprentice at the time). While I appreciate an electrician will have significantly more knowledge and practice than the average homeowner, it's pointless when so many will see a job as something "simple" and then just rush it as quickly as possible without simply testing it! Then don't get me started on two alarm installs I've dealt with (both from the same very well known local company) where on one they drilled into metal trunking then pulled T&E through with no protection totally scoring the insulation (and filling the ports on a network switch which was mounted vertically below with metal shavings) and then the second install by the same company who as far as I can tell have powered the panel from the back of a light switch with no FCU with the whole install, as far as I can tell, done with the circuit live.
That sounds like a proper bodge job! I be they paid top coin for it too. I totally agree with you on the "don't touch electrics yourself, you must get an electrician" line. Irks me so much that when it feels like theres more cowboys about than decent sparkies about. I do most of my own electrics where possible (Some things are better suited to getting someone in with the proper tools but then it comes down to a case of cost of those vs the cost of the cowboy...) after doing a fair bit of site electrics for the festival and such. While not the same as domestic work the theory is the same just no T&E!
I think you really needed to hold the camera so we can clearly see the wire on the thermostate you showing from the side cannot see which wire goes where
it is possible to locally control the thermostat without connecting it to my network? I would like the option to choose either to locally or remotely control it.
You can control basically all the features you'd need from the thermostat itself. You can also set it up in "standalone" mode without a hub where it'll work as a wireless thermostat with no smart functionality at all.
Great video, I just wondered if this was a duel or single channel? I've just removed mine but it all fell off before I could take a photo of the wiring. I have a single channel and can't get it to work. Which wires would go where ?
This is the dual channel receiver so the wiring will be different to yours. ***Obligatory disclaimer is that I'm not an electrician and haven't seen your particular system so the following is just intended as generic advice, if in doubt contact an electrician as this will likely be cheaper than replacing your boiler's PCB if you do something wrong and it blows up!*** I presume you have a combi boiler? In that case you'll probably have a permanent live and neutral which you'd use to power the receiver, then you'd have a pair of switch wires coming from the boiler which will turn the heating on when they are connected together. One of these wires would go to "Common" on the receiver and the other would go to "Heating On (NO)" on the receiver. When the receiver turns on, the relay inside it will connect Common and "Heating On (NO)" together. You may alternatively find that you only have one switch wire to the boiler (so you'd only have 3 wires excluding the earth) - in that case you'd likely need to connect live and neutral to the receiver as normal then connect this switch wire to "Heating On (NO)" and then add a wire link between the permanent live and common terminals. For this second one you need to make absolutely sure that your boiler is using mains voltage switching and not some sort of low voltage/zero volt/opentherm type connection as if it does, and you wire it up this way you'll end up shoving mains voltage into the low voltage part of your boiler's PCB and kill it.
@@camerongray1515 I've the same issue and done what you suggested but now the boiler is on all the time even when the green light is off any ideas why this would be ?
This sounds like a wiring issue to me so you'd need to make absolutely sure you know what wire is which and wire it appropriately. If in doubt you're much safer getting a professional in, it's a relatively quick and cheap job and would be cheaper than if you damage your boiler. If it's on all the time irrespective of the Hive state then it sounds like you've somehow got your switched live connected to a permanent live somewhere. If it's on when the hive is off and off when the hive is on, then it sounds like you have the Normally Open and Normally Closed contacts on the receiver mixed up.
Your Diagram of the system is just like my heating and it is terrible i have the same problem with wiring also. Theres a grey wire leaving the controller and 5 feet away its red. I have installed a hive and i think theres a feed back to the clock i cant get the boiler to turn on thats why i came on here.
appreciate if you can help me out please. Previous owner only left me the SLR1B receiver on the wall, will it work as standalone without internet feature if i only buy the receiver?
Yeah, if you just buy the thermostat itself it'll work as a standalone programmer without smart control or if you buy the hub as well you can have the smart functionality.
The 3 core and earth goes straight to the programmer/receiver - neutral, earth, heating switched live and the hot water switched live. The FCU just has T&E coming in from the consumer unit then T&E out to the live and neutral on the programmer/receiver. The 3 core simply runs through the FCU's backbox then out to the receiver, purely from a neatness perspective. Obviously, this is just information about how the installation I showed in this video is wired, it should not be treated as any sort of instructional information to apply to other installations which may be wired completely differently.
Great video thank you as it helped very much when recently installing my Hive Active. I have query I was hoping anyone could help clarify, basically when I turn my hot water on only my radiators being to warm up to which is not ideal especially during summer. Is there a way I can fix this through the receiver only?
Did this problem coincide with installing Hive or has it started since? If it was at the same time as installing Hive then you'd need to check the wiring to make sure you have it correct. You'd likely have one wire to signal for hot water to come on and a separate one for heating so you'd need to make sure they're the correct way around. If it's started since then (or if the radiators warm up slightly but less than if you are actually running the heating) it's possible that one of your motorised valves have failed and is letting water flow into the radiators when it should be blocking it or directing water only to the tank - this is a pretty common issue.
Hi Cameron, Great video thanks, I've i fitted this system exactly as you have, The problem found is when I've got both hot water and heating off the boiler still firers up from time to time, Is this because the power to the boiler is not controlled though the hub or should it be?
Depending on your boiler this may be normal, mine (Ideal combi, not controlled by Hive) occasionally kicks on and does what looks like some sort of self test/maintenance routine.
@@camerongray1515 Most boilers are designed now to go through an anti cycling routine. keeps the heat exchanger in top condition. This works independently of the heating controls.
This is happening to mine hot water does not go off . so l left it to see if it would go off on its own but did not so had to turn switch off to stop it now it comes on with times displayed but never turn off would you know why please.
Definitely would be interesting to see what a proper electrician would think of the whole house although it seems tricky to find someone that will actually do it properly and not cut corners where the customer isn't looking. My parents have always used reputable contractors after seeking reviews.etc yet literally everything they've had done has something wrong or bodged if you look closely!
Hey Cameron thanks for the reply. No that’s fair. Tbh I’d dread to have anyone look at wiring at the flat I live in. To my knowledge it’s not been changed since the 90’s or maybe the late 80’s!
Hi, I’ve just got a hive active kit, I’ve gone to install it but I only have a live, neutral, earth and a grey wire. Is this enough as I tried these and the receiver didn’t turn on?
Obviously if in doubt, you should contact an electrician. Is this the active heat for a combi boiler? You'll need to work out what each of the wires do by checking what the other end connects to, for example, in my own system with a combi boiler there was a 3 core cable but as the original programmer was battery powered the neutral wire wasn't connected at the boiler end. You need to be pretty careful as while wires should be sleeved to indicate their functions, often they aren't so they could really be anything. For a combi boiler with a 3 core cable, usually brown would be live, grey would be neutral (which really should have a blue sleeve around it to indicate this) and the black would be the switched live that signals the boiler to come on (which should be sleeved brown to indicate that it could become live). However you really must find the other end of the cable and look at how everything is connected to ensure you don't damage something by assuming a wire has one function when in fact it does something different. Also need to be really careful with old wiring colours vs new wiring colours - in old coloured twin and earth - black was neutral, red was live whereas in new coloured 3 core, the black wire is often used for a switched live signal so if you were to get those mixed up, you're going to have a bad time! I make this exact mistake at 10:13 in this video.
@@camerongray1515 yes mate, combi boiler. The old thermostat states the normal colouring for the wires it has for neutral and live but that’s all it has so going to have to see what I can do. Thanks for your fast replies. Really appreciate it.
As long as the hub is running you'll still be able to use it, even if the internet connection is down. Obviously you lose app control but you can still control it from the thermostat.
6:42 who installed that consumer unit? They have done it to an real bad standard but it was done after 2018. Do they have solar panels installed, whats does the unit on it's side do?
It was done by a registered electrician which kinda sums up the state of the industry given it's pretty much impossible for an average consumer to get work done and know that it'll be to a good standard. It's not the worst I've seen minus the fact the tails aren't glanded (there's at least a grommet strip) but there's definitely a few flaws. It's weird, like, he's put some thought into it such as putting the alarm on a non RCD protected MCB and the lighting on a dedicated RCBO since the house only has one lighting circuit so with it being a split load board having all of the lighting not dependant on one of the RCDs is a nice touch, but then he's been lazy and used a Hager RCBO in the Wylex board. Then when he first powered it up apparently he had issues with the RCDs tripping due to faults in in the installation (the old board was non RCD protected, rewireable fuses so wouldn't have picked this up) which is a bit concerning since surely you'd test for earth leakage/IR before you swap the board over. The smaller Square D board is much older (I'd guess early 2000s) and feeds the electric shower and garage - would have been put in to provide RCD protection to these circuits when they still had the old rewireable fuse board but the fact that this wasn't scrapped and those circuits incorporated into the new board seems to be sheer laziness.
@@camerongray1515 The way I found a good electrician was from recommendations, as I was going to have full AFDD/RCBO instillation. I set up a basic test for the electricians to complete. Rewire a faulty down light, if they kept the double instillation up the junction box they would get the job.
I just RU-vid auto-place the ads, they definitely put a lot on but I'd rather not risk fiddling with them due to how unpredictable the RU-vid algorithm is.
It entirely comes down to the regulations where you are, here in Scotland, as far as I'm aware, there's no limit on who can do work as long as it complies with regulations. Some larger tasks (well beyond the level of this) may require a building warrant and in those cases it's usually easier to get an electrician who can certify their own work with building control but that's well beyond the level of simply replacing a heating controller.
@@camerongray1515 I think you are allowed to do it yourself just you can't do it for anything else....depends on how confidant you are and also whether you know what you are doing
