The Energy Saving Trust estimates that the average UK family uses its kettle to brew up around 1500 times a year, or roughly 4 times a day. And why not? After all a good cuppa does ease us awake up in the morning; helps us to stay warm in the colder months; keep us going throughout the day; and finally helps us to relax and sleep well at night.
Actually there are quite a few reasons why you should never boil a kettle again, and one of those is the amount of energy that they consume. Even if we weren’t faced with rapidly rising energy prices, we’re well aware these days of the need to cut our carbon footprints, but are we aware of all the ways that we could do this?
Some of the methods of carbon cutting are well known; you can switch to low energy light bulbs, install cavity wall insulation, top up your loft insulation and turn down your central heating boiler. But are you aware how much energy you can save by switching from a conventional kettle to an instantaneous boiling water tap?
An average kettle takes 3 minutes to boil a litre of water – about enough to make four cups of tea. According to Which?, the average kettle also uses as much energy to boil that litre of water as it does to run your fridge for seven hours. If on average we brew up four times a day, that means that your kettle is costing as much every 24 hours as it would take to run the fridge for 28 hours. The kettle uses almost 15% more energy than the fridge. Use it more than four times a day and that percentage will rise further.
Switching to a Quooker tap helps to cut your carbon footprint and your electricity bill – and both of those things help to reduce our consumption of limited fossil fuel reserves. In the process of saving energy you also save money. A Quooker costs just 2p a day to run, even if you use it more frequently.
You’ll also save your own energy. Not only do you benefit from drinks made rapidly on demand, you’ll also never have to bother with filling the kettle a carrying it from the sink to the worktop. You don’t even need to lift it to pour. Boiling water will always be available, literally on tap, to do what ever you need it for, hot drinks, snacks, cooking, sterilising bottles, filling hot water bottles, blanching or rinsing trick to wash items such as knives and food mixer beaters. You’d probably even find your stress levels drop. That’s quite apart from saving water, time and effort.
Why on earth would you ever want to put the kettle on again?
