It’s about degrees of accuracy

As a rule, I don’t like places to be too warm (likely why I chose Orkney over say, the Canaries, or Antigua). So I have been keeping the thermostats at a reasonably cool level (too cold, my niece would say). But unlike central heating at home, where you can feel a difference in temperature within an hour of having adjusted the thermostat, in-floor heating doesn’t work that way. It can take a day or two to notice a change – and where you’re most likely to notice it is in your bare feet. I am loving this radiant heat – even with my preference for not too hot, I can still feel the warmth of the floors as I walk around the house.

Each room has its own thermostat and I’ve been keeping the guest rooms quite cool, with the doors closed, and the rest of the house at a nice, comfortable level. But as the weather grew cooler, the kitchen, with its linoleum flooring, was feeling colder and colder, and I realized I hadn’t seen a thermostat in there. I asked the property manager, who in turn asked the owners, and it seems the kitchen controls are behind the fridge. Behind the refrigerator. Which was why I’d never seen it. Incredibly inconvenient, but I’m guessing that’s the wall it had been on before they renovated the kitchen, and moving it just was too costly. So to adjust the temperature, you have to slide your arm behind the fridge and blindly turn the dial – there is no way to see the controls without pulling the fridge out, which I have no intention of doing. And as I said, you don’t always know right away how much your adjustments are going to impact the temperature in the room, so my first round of adjustments resulted in my walking into the kitchen the next morning and feeling a hot floor beneath my feet – hot enough that the water in Scout’s dish was actually lukewarm. How on earth was I supposed to get this right if I couldn’t see what I was doing?

Figured it out – I slide the phone camera along the wall behind the refrigerator, take a few snaps until I find one actually facing the thermostat and in focus, check the dial, and then slide my arm in and make adjustments. Take a couple more photos to check my progress, and so on and so on. I think we’ve found the sweet spot – the kitchen seems quite comfortable now.

All kitchen fussiness aside, I really do like this form of heating.