Connect Hive to central heating (oil boiler) (Ed.)

[YooFlo]

Hello, I have an oil boiler which is doing just the heating, the installation doesn’t have a 2way valve , has just pump and room thermostat. I want to replace the room thermostat with a Hive one, but I just don’t know how to make the wire connection, I will attach a diagram which looks pretty much what I have less the 2 way valve and of course the thermostat doesn’t appear either. So my question is , where do I connect the pink wire from the hive if I don’t have a valve?
Thank you

 

[stem]

Unfortunately, it might not be as straight forward as you think. It sounds to me like you have a part pumped, part gravity system whereby the water is only pumped around the radiators and the hot water cylinder is heated by gravity circulation directly from the boiler, so that the hot water is heated whenever the boiler is on. The usual clue is that there are 4 water pipes connected to the boiler as the diagram below. (Not including the oil supply pipe)

You will also likely have a timeswitch or programmer to control the on/off times, and the thermostat does just controls the room temperature. So the problem for you is that Hive has both time and temperature functions in the same unit. If my assumptions are correct the drawing you have posted will have little or no resemblance to your installation. In the diagram you posted, the motorised valves are controlling the boiler, but you don't have them.

So, to assist further the answer to the following questions would help:

Is your system the type with just pumped central heating and gravity circulation of hot water?
What time control do you have? Is it a programmer or just a timeswitch? what is the make / model?
What is the make / model of the room thermostat?
Does the central heating only work when the hot water is on at the same time as well?

 

[YooFlo]

Thank you very much for your message. The hot water it’s been disconnected from the boiler , so the cylinder has its own timer and gets the hot water using just electric, the boiler is connected just to the radiators and has no time programmer ,it’s just a junction box where the pump , boiler and thermostat is connected, boiler also has its own thermostat plus the Honeywell room thermostat which I just put it on when I need heating. The hive I have it’s a kit , contains a receiver and a wireless thermostat. I will attach pictures with the boiler and thermostats . All I wanted is if it’s possible to get rid of the Honeywell thermostat completely and only connect the hive receiver with the boiler.

 

[stem]

The version of Hive you have is the dual channel for systems that have stored hot water as well as central heating, so is not really the ideal one for you to use.

The single channel Hive would be better suited which only controls central heating. However, you can still use the dual channel, so I'll proceed based on that, but it's a bit of a 'fudge' IMHO. It will give you hot water control options that won't actually do anything, but the heating part should still work OK.

Your existing room thermostat looks like a Honeywell T6360B, if it is, inside the lid it will have a wiring diagram, something like this:

From this diagram

Terminal 1 is L
Terminal 2 is N
Terminal 3 is Heating on

The wires in the above terminals move from the room thermostat and connect to the Hive dual channel receiver instead as follows:

Honeywell 1 L = Hive L
Honeywell 2 N = Hive N
Honeywell 3 = Hive 4 (Heating on)

The above assumes that the existing room thermostat has been installed properly. Occasionally they are installed without the neutral, N connection, and they will still work in a fashion, albeit somewhat inaccurately. However, it it is missing, the Hive won't work.

 

[YooFlo]

Thank you !
It does look like they are 3 wires in the junction box, need to see how I’ll take it off the wall as it looks like they put plasterboard around it .
Yesterday I came across another problem which I didn’t know existed before I wrote this thread. The boiler I sent in the picture is replacing the old one and of course I thought it will be just easy to swap the wires, but looks like the old boiler has 4 wires, live, neutral, earth and SL , where the other one I want to use has just live, neutral and earth. Now looks like the pump , boiler and thermostat are connected as this:
Pump L connected with N from boiler and power, then N is connected with a wire which comes from thermostat and the SL from the boiler . I’ll attach a picture with the connection and I’ll specify what each color is, hopefully you can help me with this unexpected problem.
In the picture the cable with 2 wires blue and brown is the pump, the cable with 4 wires blue , yellow, red and earth is the cable which comes from another junction box where power and stat is connected, and the cable with blue, red , black and earth is from the boiler where the red and blue is L and N and black is the SL .
Thank you very much and I really appreciate your help

 

[stem]

The boiler I sent in the picture is replacing the old one and of course I thought it will be just easy to swap the wires, but looks like the old boiler has 4 wires, live, neutral, earth and SL , where the other one I want to use has just live, neutral and earth.

So the Camray 5 is the 'new' boiler. According to the data I have though, it also has 4 wires. SL / PL / N / E. Maybe yours is a different version? Do you have a manual or wiring diagram for it?

 

[YooFlo]

So the old one is a Trianco and it’s outdoor, has the cable with 4 wires and the Camray 5 is the one which has the cable with 3 wires , I think it has a diagram similar with what you sent, when I get home I’ll make a photo and send it to you .

 

[stem]

OK, let's see what it looks like. Unfortunately I'm not familiar with either of your boilers.

Based on your photo of the 'terminals' and description of the unseen wiring, I believe that the diagram below will represent your current installation. Perhaps you could confirm? Earth wires aren't shown for clarity.

I do have a couple of concerns regarding the pump wiring though:

1. The pump wires seem to be transposed. The blue wire appears to be connected to the L and the brown wire connected to the N.
2. You say it's a two core cable, so no earth connection. I've never seen a pump that doesn't require an earth connection.

 

[YooFlo]

Yes that’s what I thought about the pump , but I was thinking maybe that’s something that I don’t know . It will be installed another pump anyway.

Camray 5 picture

 

[stem]

There seem to be quite a few variants of this boiler and I can't find a wiring diagram anywhere showing external controls connected to your model.

However, if you were to connect the permanent live wire to the boiler L the boiler would just run continually regardless of the thermostat / Hive.

If you connected the SL to the boiler L instead, the room thermostat / Hive would switch the live on and off, but I don't know if your boiler is designed to work like that.

 

[YooFlo]

I live in a rented cottage and my landlord has another cottage which wants to demolish and build another house, that’s from where the camray boiler comes and of course the one I have stopped working and couldn’t make it work anymore so we decided to put this camray 5 , I have all the other bits, like shower pump, pump, 2 way valve , cylinder,the hive which was installed with it, but unfortunately where I live thinks are simple and don’t need all that, that’s why I thought it will be just simple to swap the two, but looks like it’s not that simple . Thank you very much for your time and help, if you think of something else please don’t hesitate to write it here .

 

[stem]

You might want to consider starting a new thread with a specific boiler question stating that it's an oil boiler and giving its make*. There are guys on here that work with oil boilers regularly but they might not be interested in looking at a thread that makes reference to Hive controls. However a specific boiler question may pique their interest to have a look.

*e.g. Help required moving an oil fired Camray 5