One of the joys of the British Gas Hive system is the scheduling of heating & water. However, my install has a particular tendency to just stop working. This is a problem because you don’t get any real warning apart from a freezing cold shower. Since this has just happened to me for the 3rd time in a year (twice in as many weeks) I thought I’d write down my guide to getting it online again. This is just for me, you should obviously phone the Hive helpline and NOT follow these instructions.
- First off, check the status of the service; https://status.hivehome.com/
- Look at the Hive Hub controller (probably next to your boiler). If it’s got a big red light on then; ensure no other functions are on, i.e. no green lights on heating or water. Turn the hub off, wait a second or two, turn it back on again. For me this is fuse-style switch.
- Now go to your graphical thermostat and press the knob in. If it says, “no signal” then take it near to the Hub Controller (see 1). Take a battery out of the thermostat, wait a second or two, put the battery back in. Press the centre knob again, you should now have a signal.
- Log on to your Hive App or the online web site. If the heating & water are still saying offline then go to the Hive Hub next to your router. Turn that off, wait a second or two and back on again. Wait for the green light to settle down. Once it has then you just have to wait about 15 mins. If you are using the App you may have to also kill that off and restart it (not just move away from it, you need to kill it). Hopefully it will be back online. If not, you’ll have to call the Hive help line.
Hive Keeper for Windows 10/Windows Phone
Since I became concerned about not realizing when Hive had gone offline I decided to write a little helper. Providing the machine you install it on is running it might help you detect when it’s gone offline, install it from the Microsoft Store
IT Bytes 
This is a nice idea, but falls down on 2 counts:
1) I installed it and set alarms on all devices, including the hub. Then I turned off the hub and received no notification.
2) If it did work, I imagine it is supposed to show an alert on my PC. What really interests me is receiving a notification (e.g. an email) when I am away from home, and looking forward to coming home to a nice warm house. If I know about it in advance, I can remotely power cycle the hub, using a TPlink smart plug, which will reset the hub. But the app doesn’t give a remote notification.
Pity.
Marmite
Edit – forget item 1. It gave an alert on my PC after about 10 minutes. That’s fine, but how can I send that to my phone?
Thanks for the feedback.
1) Re: Turning the hub off, do you mean powering the hub down completely? If so then Hive should show your Hub as offline. That does sound strange. I’d like to know more about that.
2) Notifications. The app is an extension of my own needs, it was installed on a Windows Phone so that’s how I received notifications. However, to use actual notifications I’d need to pay for the service. Emails on the other hand could work but it will require the app to be running…somewhere. Do you think people would find the app useful enough to pay a subscription?
Hi Pauliom. Sorry, my edit was not clear. I did power off the hub and initially nothing happened, but after 10 minutes, a Windows notification told me it was offline. So that worked fine. No complaints.
With respect to notifications, my w10 pc runs permanently, so the app is always running on it and that could send me an email. Maybe people with laptops etc. turn them off a lot, so that isn’t so useful. Then maybe you would need to create an Android or iOS app. I would be happy to pay c£5 for such a utility, because I suffer a lot of offline incidents. Not sure how many other users there would be. It really ought to be in the Hive app. Or in the Hive cloud.
Cheers,
Marmite