We're now nearly a whole month into my year of thrift and I'm noticing that I'm constantly on the look out for ways to save money. As well as cutting down how much I spend on the weekly shop I've also become obsessed with how to our minimise gas and electricity bills. Not only am I running a spreadsheet keeping track of how much gas and electricity we use every day, but I'm also regularly turning things off and reducing the heating by a degree or two.
As well as saving a bit of money, it has also become obvious that doing little things like this and checking the meter daily can be quite time consuming, so I'm a big fan of trying to use technology to save me money and time and that's exactly what Hive are doing with their Active Heating.
Hive Active Heating allows you to control your heating and hot water via your smart phone, tablet or computer from wherever you are at the time. Now, when I'd heard of this before I had assumed that it meant that you had to change your gas provider and get a new boiler, but it seems I was wrong.
The Hive system works along side your existing heating system and just gives you a new wireless thermostat (much like one that I have on my heating at present) but also a hub which plugs into your broadband router so that you can control the thermostat over the internet. With the Hive app on your smart phone or tablet you can then control the thermostat from your friend's house, the supermarket or even the train on your daily commute.
So, what the benefit of being able to control your thermostat whilst doing the weekly shop? Well, it's simple really – you can stop yourself from paying to heat an empty house, you can ensure that the hot water only goes on when you really need it and you can even make your heating come on a bit earlier if you realise that you're going to be home an hour earlier than you had originally planned. That control-ability can help both save you money and save energy – helping to make your household greener.
If your daily routine is quite predictable you can also program the thermostat to follow a daily routine so that it puts the heating or hot water on at the times that fit in with what you and your family do. Then if you do something a bit out of the ordinary you can just use your Hive app to tweak things.
This little video from Hive puts it all into pictures.
My other money saving tip would be that you really don't need to have your heating set at 22 degrees like they do in the video though. Pop on a jumper (did you notice they're all in just short sleeved t-shirts?) and knock it down to 20, then you'll save yourself even more money!
Discalimer: This featured post was brought to you in association with Hive.
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