Small things matter

[Joeboy]

Hi JB

Another useful grid avoidance unit is replacing the mains powered vacuum with a battery powered vacuum cleaner which you can charge when you have spare incoming solar power. In our house with the kids and the dogs hoovering is a daily task and the battery deployed unit saves around £73 each year. They are relatively cheap to buy or you can get lucky and get them on Freecycle quite often.

Liking the pulley maid, we have had one for 12 years which is located in the lounge next to the inglenook and is never without something on it drying.

Moxi

Nice one Moxi, . I will retain that for vac uneconomical breakdown time.

Never been so happy to see the rain! Ho Fat's Chinese laundry is now fully operational!

[Joeboy]

Screwfix, 1400 screws £22.99 for anyone needing a restock? its a 34% discount.



Also got the 86 Yr old MIL a lightly used airfryer for £15. Will try it out with pakkora tonight. It will be handy for the old bird.

[Stig]

What's your experience of an air fryer, Joe? I'm wondering if it would be a good alternative to the gas oven/grill when just cooking for one, or would a small electric grill/oven be a better bet? I'm a bit put off by air fryers being so fashionable and the cynic in me is thinking "emperor's new clothes?".

[Joeboy]

What's your experience of an air fryer, Joe? I'm wondering if it would be a good alternative to the gas oven/grill when just cooking for one, or would a small electric grill/oven be a better bet? I'm a bit put off by air fryers being so fashionable and the cynic in me is thinking "emperor's new clothes?".

The tower one with racks in the background is absolutely brilliant. Essentially, it's a small compact power efficient well insulated fan oven. Cooks well and quickly for next to nothing in power. We have a basket unit out in Turkey, a recent purchase but it just clicked into place as a missing piece to our Turkish life and I was doing a lot of cooking in it to take the load off swmbo. I genuinely think they are a bit of a silver bullet gadget with long, long legs. Many variants and tbh, I'll have both on my worktop (rack and also basket type) and not feel excessive.

Oh, total bonus, we can as a rule run both the airfryer and a couple of induction hob rings and barely if at all exceed the 3.8kW limit of our hybrid inverter supplying from the batteries.

They cook well & incredibly efficiently. As to which model, well my Womble instincts drive me to the 2nd hand market. There are many out there which didn't fit with their original purchaser for varied reasons and have extremely light use. I'd start there Stig?

[Moxi]

Plus one for the mini airfryer oven style, we have a Uten from Amazon £76 quid unless you can snag one used like new for less ? great for baking, does a mean rotisserie chicken and anything else you would normally do in an oven but more efficient.

Next time we do our kitchen its a genuine likelihood that we wont be fitting a conventional oven - there's simply no need.

Moxi

[Stig]

Thanks guys, sounds like it's just the thing. Less use of the gas oven (30+ years old) would be good over the summer.

[Moxi]

Check "u-tube" out for people using the Uten and similar style air fryers (mini fan oven) to get an idea of how it can be used, we have a ninja airfryer pressure cooker and a tefal actifry and the ninja is the least used (comes into its own in winter for stews etc) but the Uten and the actifry are used daily.

Moxi

[Mr Gus]

Big old thread on them around here.

Another big yes to an airfryer (see thread) ditto our daughter with a cheap one from costco, her student flatmates thought "bills included" meant go crazy with the electric ..not "reasonable use" (we sent her down with a temp / humidity monitor so she had an inkling as to comfort versus excess..

Airfryer was to speed up kitcheb space (big oven) & reduce energy consumption in case SHTF, luckily she got the "university brains in training" to read the contract paragraph properly thereafter "OH S5h1t" ..they toned it down after that.

Stig, our oven was last used in November for a pizza, before that it was the summer, (also for another pizza) ...so full sized oven used twice in a year, now its storage, we use the airfryer lid & the other (instantpot pressure lid) all the time... honestly.

As I've said elsewhere, frozen pizza sales must be suffering badly.

Daughters (actually the one we originally bought, but decided no up to par, ..good enough for a student though)
https://www.costco.co.uk/Appliances/Sma ... yer/p/6487

Ours: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Instant-Pot-Mu ... B088M9QK72

Amazon prime days (soon) will likely be exploding with instantpot deals, & airfryer deals in general

[Joeboy]

Thanks guys, sounds like it's just the thing. Less use of the gas oven (30+ years old) would be good over the summer.

This was this evening on MIL £15 2nd hand buy. Nice and simple. Pulled 1kW cooking and cost 0.15kWh cooking the bhaji's. They did not last long!

[Stinsy]

What's your experience of an air fryer, Joe? I'm wondering if it would be a good alternative to the gas oven/grill when just cooking for one, or would a small electric grill/oven be a better bet? I'm a bit put off by air fryers being so fashionable and the cynic in me is thinking "emperor's new clothes?".

I’m an air frier convert! Used to take 20mins in the oven to cook fishfingers and waffle for the boy. Air frier does the same job in 7mins pulling no more than 500W.