Author: April (Genius Hub)

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Mr. Roe

Hay Family Home
Hay Family Home

MR. ROE

CASE STUDY

DURHAM

Mr Roe, his wife and parents live in a lovely rural home near Durham, in Northeast England. It was built in the 1750s. Fireplaces originally provided heat throughout the house, as you can see from the 12 chimneys along the roofline. Fires were lit in the rooms as necessary. Now, the house is heated by an LPG-fired boiler, but heating the entire 6000 sq. ft property is very expensive. Roe was looking for a way to heat their home that had the individual room control of the original fireplaces, with the convenience of central heating. The Genius Hub provided the ideal solution.

Why switch to smart heating?
“For me, the decision to get smart heating was primarily an economic one. Smart heating provides an intelligent way of controlling the house, without overheating or under heating individual rooms. With smart heating, you only heat rooms when you use them. I admit there was also the ‘cool factor’ of being able to use my phone to control each room from anywhere. I was definitely attracted to the ‘zoned’ systems that control each radiator. It’s much more convenient than having to go throughout the house to turn radiators off when the rooms are not being used. You really need do that in a home this size; otherwise would cost a fortune to heat!”

Why did you choose the Genius Hub?
“I looked at some comparison reviews of smart systems, including Honeywell, Nest and Tado. In those reviews, people glowed about The Genius Hub. They were incredibly effusive and said that The Genius Hub was the most capable system on the market. No other system on the market had as many features, or was as flexible, as The Genius Hub. The other systems limited the number of zones we could control and lacked the automatic footprint mode. Also, the other products were “clunky” with bulky valves or controllers that wouldn’t fit into our home. For larger houses, there is simply no other system that can do as much as The Genius Hub.”

Were there any concerns?
“Yes, I was worried that as The Genius Hub is a wireless system, it wouldn’t work well in our house. We can’t get our cordless phone to work across the house even with two range extenders, so we were worried about the range of the signal. I spoke to the Genius home technical team and they assured me that it would be fine, as each radiator valve and smart plug repeats the signal, and they’d installed it in large homes before without any problem. We went ahead with it, and it does indeed work perfectly well; there’s a strong signal everywhere.”.

What were your first impressions of the Genius Hub?
“Before ordering, I rang up with a number of questions about the installation. The guys on the phone were incredibly helpful and talked me through the configuration of the system. In one room we have 6 radiators, but the team sorted it all out, so I knew exactly what to order. We bought it through the website and then liaised with the local installer. When the kit arrived, it was already labelled and configured, so the components just needed to be installed. It was very easy; I didn’t need to do anything. The installer did experiment a bit with positioning the smart plugs, to find the locations that gave the strongest network signal. But apart from that, it was completely straightforward. I loved that I could let the Genius home technicians log into my system, so they could give us remote support if we needed it. More importantly, though, it just worked!”

Has Genius Hub lived up to your expectations?
“Yes, absolutely. It’s given us the control we need so that we can easily stay comfortable without wasting money. I also particularly like how it looks in our home. The Genius Hub is clean, white and smart, which fits in very well in all of the rooms, even the more formal rooms. For example, there is not much to see on the radiator valves, they are very discreet. The room sensors are much smaller than we expected – we thought that they would be the same size as security sensors but actually they are tiny, so no one notices them. The other systems look utterly dated and very poor in comparison. Another thing that’s great about The Genius Hub is the ability to chop and change; moving radiator valves from one zone to another was easy to do. We did that because we realised that we didn’t need control of one room that we had bought a valve and room sensor for. We easily moved the valve and room sensor to another room and then assigned it to a new room on the app.”

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Chiseldon House Hotel

Chiseldon House
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Chiseldon House

CHISELDON HOUSE HOTEL

CASE STUDY

SWINDON

Chiseldon House Hotel provides luxurious hospitality in a beautiful old Georgian country house. The building has been extended a number of times and now has 21 guest rooms as well as restaurant and meeting facilities. Before installing Genius Hub, the whole building was heated, wasting enormous amounts of energy on heating empty rooms. We interviewed partners John and Mark to discover how Genius Hub has helped them cut their energy bills significantly while improving comfort for their guests.

How did you control your heating before?
“In Winter, the heating was turned on in the whole hotel, even for just for one guest. Before we had Genius Hub, radiator valves were constantly being adjusted and staff would reset them to 3 after checkout. We were heating a lot of empty rooms.”

Why did you choose the Genius system?
“Genius Hub was the only system that had the level of control that we were interested in. Plus, it’s a great value. With Genius Hub, we had a product that offered far more than the competition, at about a quarter of the cost of other commercial systems. What was most important to us was the ability to be able to control everything from the reception desk, and to quickly respond to an individual guest’s request.”

“In those days, Genius Hub was a relatively new player in the market, and they were clearly developing the product and continually improving it. We saw that as a real advantage because we were keen to get the care and attention that you often get from smaller companies.” 

“This is important to a business of our size. We are pleased to say that the service has stayed excellent, even though they have grown significantly since then.”

How do you use Genius Hub?
“Bedroom heating is controlled directly from the reception desk. This is really convenient because we can just switch the heating on and off as we check guests in and out of the booking system. When reception sells a room, they can turn the rooms on for the guests using the PC. We also always keep an extra room warm for unscheduled arrivals. The ability to control each room’s heating from the reception desk is a huge benefit for us. In particular, Genius Hub allows staff to be responsive to guests who request a change in temperature in their room. Before Genius Hub, someone would go upstairs to adjust the heating, now it is done from the reception desk with a click of a button.”

“However, we found that guests may not notice temperature changing by a couple of degrees so we learned to temporarily ‘boost’ a room for 60 minutes before returning to a more sensible temperature. The customers are always happy with that! We are also learning to manage temperatures throughout the hotel. For example, guests are more satisfied when the corridors are slightly cooler; the bedrooms feel warmer by comparison. It’s great that we can just set a schedule and Genius Hub does the rest. We also look at the temperature readings from the room sensors, so we can easily spot if there’s a problem with the radiator, without having to wait for a complaint to find out. We are selling our hotel on the quality of service and Genius Hub pushes it up a notch.” 

Do you have any difficulties with the Genius Hub?
“The only real issue has been our internet connection. When it goes down, Genius Hub just sticks to whatever schedule we’ve set it to. If we want to change it, for example, to switch on a room, we have to run to the room, which isn’t as convenient. We’re getting a tablet with WiFi to put at reception, which will connect directly to Genius Hub even if we don’t have internet access, which will be a good solution. To be honest, our only regret is that we don’t yet have every part of the hotel controlled by Genius Hub. However, Genius Hub has developed and we are extending the system throughout the whole property. Genius Hub gives us so much control over the guest rooms and we will be pleased to extend that experience to the entire hotel.”

Has Genius Hub cut your energy bills?
“Effectively it has because our occupancy and the unit cost of energy have both gone up dramatically, but our heating costs have stayed the same. We have definitely got a two-year payback on the total cost of the system, including installation.”

“What’s even more important is that we now have a far more acceptable level of heating throughout the building, and can be responsive to customers. For us, the comfort of our guests comes first, and Genius Hub has definitely improved this.”

Book your free Genius Hub survey here!

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An award winning country house hotel set in the stunning Marlborough Downs in the heart of the Wiltshire countryside.
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David Hay

Hay Family
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Hay Family

DAVID HAY

CASE STUDY

YORKSHIRE

David, Lizzie and their children, Sephy and Zephyrus, live in a stunning period building that previously served as a pump house. It is located in a beautiful rural area of North Yorkshire, surrounded by fields and hedgerows. It’s a spacious property and, like so many older homes, cost a fortune to heat. The heating used to run on LPG, and would land them with a heating bill of £2,800 per year.

Why did David choose Genius Hub?
With their heating bill through the roof, David was on the hunt for solutions. Many of the options or improving the building itself, such as wall insulation, would be very expensive and disruptive. David saw that smarter heating controls were clearly the place to start, especially as they have many rooms they don’t often use: 

“The fact that The Genius Hub is fully wireless means it was really easy to install. You don’t need fancy wiring, or the walls knocked about. All you need is the Genius Hub and the valves on the radiators, and you get this new level of flexibility which no other system can offer.I had considered Nest and Honeywell evohome, they both popped up when I searched, but they would not work as well for us. The Nest just controls one zone, so it would cost a fortune to have multiple ones in the house, and evohome doesn’t offer the automatic control. Price wasn’t the most important factor, but The Genius Hub system actually worked out cheaper than evohome anyway. This system is the only one that offers all of the options for complete control, and it is so clearly the best on the market.”

What was the main concern?
With a large property and the desire to control all 28 radiators individually, the initial outlay on the Genius home equipment wasn’t insignificant. Did David have any questions or concerns before making the investment?

“Not really. I guess the only concern was the battery life for the valves.  That’s turned out to not be an issue at all, actually. I get about a year out of the normal batteries that came with the system, but I bought a load of AA Energiser lithium batteries from eBay for £1 each and they last even longer. So far they have been in for 6 months and are still reading 100%!”

“The only question I had before ordering was about the fitting of the valves because the towel radiators were slightly different to the others, but Genius home technical support was great at helping me with that. I also didn’t realise that I didn’t need a dump radiator, but that was explained to me too by one of the technical team. After that I just ordered it online, it was easy.”

 

How does David use the Genius Hub system?
The Genius Hub is the only zoned home heating control that can be a truly “fit and forget” solution, as it learns when you use each room and automatically cuts energy consumption without impacting on your comfort. David sometimes prefers to exercise a bit more control over his heating though.

“In the winter we tend to keep all of the rooms cooler and then simply go to the app and boost the rooms when we plan to use them. I always use The Genius Hub app on my Android phone and that works really well. I’ve recently started using my Windows tablet and that works quite nicely too.” 

“I also keep it on a tab on my browser, so when I am working in the study, I can just boost it as required. We’ve also got room sensors in some of the rooms. The kitchen is in ‘Footprint mode’, so it learns when the room is used and warms it up before we use it, and that works well. Otherwise, the other rooms are in the super-eco mode, which means the rooms only heat up when there is someone actually using them. This works well with the rooms that we use less frequently. Now that it is all set up it is spot on, we almost ignore that it is even here. I love  just heating the rooms when I am using them, it just makes so much sense!”

Is the Genius Hub energy saving?
It’s fun to be able to control your heating down to the individual room, but the bottom line is: how much energy does it actually save?

“After installing The Genius Hub, the cost of heating the house dropped by 40% in the first winter. So it was instantly saving us over £1,000 per year off our gas bill giving us a 2-year payback! Since then, we’ve had a Ground Source Heat Pump installed, to replace the LPG boiler.” 

“The company that installed the heat pump estimated that our heating bill would go down to £1,000 per year, but because we’ve got The Genius Hub, it’s actually gone down to just £400. So with just those two technologies combined, we’ve seen a seven-fold decrease in the cost of our heating.”

What is it like to use the Genius Hub?
Nothing beats an old-fashioned thermostat for simplicity, even if it’s a wasteful option. Is it complicated to control such a large zoned system using The Genius Hub?

“It’s really easy to control everything via The Genius Hub app, it’s just a couple of taps to heat whichever room you need next. I can’t say how enthusiastic I am about the system; it provides us with everything that we ever needed in terms of heating control. Also, the response from Genius Hub was amazing if there was a concern about any part of how the system worked. I cannot fault the after-sales service, any problem has been resolved and even at really unsociable hours sometimes. I am quite evangelical about it really, I like the concept and I like the fact that it saves us money. I think that this is how all homes should be controlled. I really think that this is the best thing that we have done to our home. I really love it!”

Book your free Genius Hub survey here!

Take a look at other case studies and how our customers are saving 30% off their heating bills.
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