Makes sense.  I use my air fryer as much as possible these days.

Cosori.

Yet to put the heat on upstairs

Been on downstairs for a while now.

I like the Norwegians

It's intense sunshine in our local park today, balancing out the cold air.
Really beautiful.

Before the colder, or perhaps cooler weather came, I fitted a double glazed cat flap in the door between the kitchen and utility room.
Extra obstacle course for the cats, but they don't seem to mind.

The utility has doors out to back garden and garage (both cold spaces 🙂), and whilst the doors are well sealed etc the utility room never gets particularly warm. Not do we need it too.
We were keeping the kitchen / utility door open at night so the cats could come in, eat and sleep in the kitchen, in their favourite places.

With that for now shut all day and night, and fully sealed with draught strips, the house has become the warm place it should always have been.
No longer does the kitchen underfloor heating have to try heat the leaky double height utility room.
Using more energy than necessary and causing warm to cold area convection you could feel.

The change in both comfort level and minimisation on energy required is very noticeable.
Energy usage is down significantly.

We've turned the underfloor heating in the 3 downstairs zones down by 2 full degrees.

The underfloor heating is coming on a tiny bit in the morning, when required, many days it's not been needed at all in lounge and hall. (compared to last year), even allowing for the warm spells we've had this autumn, and we've found the bedrooms perfectly warm enough so far - Heat rises.
The 30cm bedroom ceiling insulation and 14" thick thatched roof with insulated fire barrier also help no doubt.
It's only now that the house has realised it's warmth / miser EPC A/B potential.
All from that little change.

If the gas boiler ever dies it will be great pump time.

Still not done anything about solar / batteries - inertia🙄!
Perhaps best to do heat pump and solar etc at the same time..

Hearing that solar and heat pump mania is gripping the land and equipment and skilled fitters are scarce at the moment.

We'd need planning permission for the little solar farm, as it can't/won't go on the roof.

Anyone else smell much more wood etc being burned already than previous winters?
Climate change hammering!

It's funny how the body adjusts to different temperatures. Years ago we would have thermostat set to 20c, then for the past few years it has been set to 18.5c . Wearing three layers I'm actually comfortable in this 15.5c but I'd be struggling without the 'technical fleece' top layer I'm wearing - it's light and thin but surprisingly warm.

I went into the music room earlier, it was a chilly 15C but I had a thick fleecy on, turned the electric underfloor heating on until it reached 20C then turned it off. That gave me a decent listening session.

The difference is I used to just wear a T shirt in all seasons indoors, now I've learned to keep warm with thicker clothing. I don't like it as much, but needs must.

Lol it's going to be thermal top time then Brian but remember you Scots dudes are harder than the rest of us and can wear t-shirts when it's-5 outside!!  

You may have seen the raft of information recently, (possibly influencer hype) about turning down the boiler temperature* to ensure that boilers are working in condensing mode and hence at their best efficiency. The premise is that many UK condensing boilers are oversized and hence the water returning to the boiler is still too hot to allow condensing. Eventually the boiler will stop heating even though a simple on/off room thermostat** is still calling for heat. in the worse case, the boiler will constantly be cycling on and off either at the boiler or because the house is close to the set temperature

The set me thinking, for the sake of argument, if the cost of gas has doubled, using half as much as previous years should keep you inline with previous budgets, but, how best to use this reduced amount of gas to get the best effect? These are my current musings which assume that your current settings were as lean as possible

1. Heat losses increases significantly with the size of the temperature difference between inside and outside which is why turning down the thermostat works so well (i.e. 18 rather than 20)
2. Would "pulsing" the heating improve efficiency while maintaining some level of comfort? instead of having the heating on for say 4 hours from 18:00, maybe two one hour bursts or four 30 min bursts would maintain some comfort but improve efficiency since the boiler has more work to do since it is heating a colder house and not cycling
3. How you use this half-energy approach depends upon your personal circumstances... Is the house empty during the day etc. It would be a shame to have residual warmth in the house when you are asleep or out
4. Personally, while I find being wrapped up in a blanket fine on the sofa, late in the evening while watching telly, I find it very hard to work at my desk with a cold house and bundled clothing.

* the adjustment procedure differs for combi (no hot water tank) and system boilers

**Many thermostats, even modern "smart" ones are set up only to be binary on/off switches for below or at/above the desired room temp. This means that the boiler operation is also binary....100% or off. There is additional wiring and standards (opentherm) which allow the boiler output to be modulated.... when the room needs a lot of heat, the boiler is at 100% and as the room gets nearer the required temp, the boiler output is reduced. This improves efficiency and boiler lifetime. External sensors, (weather compensation) can also be used to help with this.