Why we stop at nothing to conserve water

While we may be enjoying an unseasonably warm spring, which is great for your heating bills, the lack of rain over the winter months has already led to the prospect of hose pipe bans and the need for water conservation, long before the summer actually arrives.   

Only using what you need is the first rule of water conservation.  That’s why you should never leave a tap running while you brush your teeth, for example, and why it’s better to shower than to take a bath.  That’s also exactly why you should use a Quooker rather than a kettle. 

Of course it is possible to only put into a kettle the exact amount of water that you need, but who ever does?  Even if you put a modest amount of water into the kettle, you always allow for a little extra in case there’s limescale floating in the kettle or in case the kettle evaporates some of the water you need.  It’s a guesstimate.  The Quooker, on the other hand, delivers the exact amount you need in an instant with impressive precision. 

If, later in the day, you want more boiling water, you might reboil the water that’s already in the kettle or top up from the cold tap and then reboil. 

That’s going to affect your water quality so never get a really good cup of tea or coffee, so you may throw away the leftover water each time.  The cumulative effect of that is a lot of wasted water.  Dispensing boiling water straight from a tap means you really do only use what you need every time you cook or brew up.  You’re saving time but you’re also doing your bit for the planet too.

The really shocking waste of water in the home comes when you wash up, which in a busy family home you could do several times a day.  In order to get hot water for washing up you’ll let the hot tap run until it’s hot enough.  In doing so you let the cold water contained in several metres of pipework run straight into the drain.  When you’ve filled the bowl and turned off the tap, the water left in the pipe will gradually cool down, ready to be wasted next time you want to wash up, or just to wash your hands. 

A Quooker COMBI in the kitchen avoids all that water waste.  By mixing water from the boiling Quooker tap with your normal kitchen cold tap, the COMBI provides instantly available washing up water without firing a boiler.  This saves those metres of wasted water every time you wash your hands or your dishes.  Over the course of a year this conserves a huge amount of water. 

Amazingly it saves enough water to fill a swimming pool.  That’s pretty impressive  - even before you stop to consider how much energy was wasted heating up that body water, before it cooled down again and you just threw it away.  That’s energy which you’ve paid for but got no benefit from, of course.

Time-saving devices often use more resources, and water conserving products are often more time consuming to use.  Isn’t it refreshing to find an invention that conserves water as well as saving you time and lowering your energy bills?  Almost as refreshing as the superb tea and coffee it makes for you.  Because the bottom line is, it does also give you superb quality boiling water. 

That’s why we stop at nothing to conserve water.

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Why we worked overtime to save you precious minutes

What would you like more of?  Money, obviously – but a great number of people, when asked this question, will also say “time”.  Not surprising perhaps, in a society where the term ‘time-poor’ has become part of our language.  At Quooker, we’ve put much of our time into developing a boiling water tap that saves our customers time.

Over the course of the day, saving three minutes each time you would normally boil a kettle saves you about a quarter of an hour, or an hour and a three quarters each week.  Add up the time you save every week over the course of a year and you’ll save around 91 hours.  That’s 3.8 days in total, except it’s your time during your busy days that you’re saving, so in terms of waking hours it’s more like five days extra to do what you want with. 

What can you do with three minutes?  You could iron a shirt – so it could determine whether you look smart or crumpled at that all important business meeting.

You can empty your waste paper bins and take your rubbish out to put in the wheelie bin or the recycling – one less job for the weekend.  You can open your post and realise you must make that credit card payment or you’ll be charged a penalty.  You may even have time to pay that bill online. 

Or you can listen to your children, or talk to your other half. 

Of course you’d try to do all these things anyway, but often it’s a choice; have a cuppa or do that important small thing.  You try to do both, but by the time the kettle has boiled you don’t have time for a drink.  Or you get distracted and come back forty minutes later to a lukewarm kettle which you have to boil again, wasting energy as well as time.  With instantly available boiling water you can make your drink in seconds and do that important task as well. 

You can drink your tea in between turning and ironing that shirt, so you go to your important meeting properly hydrated and able to concentrate.  You can sip your coffee as you open the post and pay that bill, so you feel refreshed before moving on to your next errand.

What could be better than to share time with the family over a cup of your favourite brew?  On frantically busy mornings, it can make all the difference.  You can between know everyone has gone to work or school with a hot drink inside them, or could and seeing them go without.

We know it’s only a few minutes here and there, but when you’re running a busy home and keeping to a tight schedule, every second counts.  Or you just may want another three minutes in bed to think about the day ahead.  We’re happy to oblige.

That’s why we worked overtime to save you precious minutes... 

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Why we exert ourselves to save you energy

With domestic fuel prices rising, just about everyone’s giving at least a passing thought to how they can cut down on their energy consumption.  Even if we’re not doing so out of environmental motives, we are keen to reduce our household bills. 

You might be forgiven for thinking that a tap that can provide 100ºC boiling water instantaneously at any time of the day or night could be something of a luxury when it comes to energy consumption.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  If you want an energy efficient kitchen, then a Quooker tap, particularly a Quooker COMBI that mixes boiling water with your normal cold feed, is a must – here’s why!

A boiling water tap is great for making hot drinks, snacks and hot water bottles in seconds, all more efficiently than a kettle.  But that’s just the start.  A Quooker is also amazing at cleaning pans, beaters, baking trays and all those kitchen gadgets that are fiddly and hard to wash up. 

Actually, some of the biggest savings to be had are in good old conventional washing up, as one of our customers pointed out just this week.    

He tells us that since installing a Quooker COMBI the family now only uses their normal domestic hot water supply to wash their hands in the downstairs cloakroom.  All other hot water for cooking, cleaning and washing up they now get from their Quooker tap.  This has allowed them to reduce their domestic hot water heating by 30 minutes a day, which gives them a significant saving on their gas consumption.  They’re also saving on electricity because the Quooker is more energy efficient than a kettle.

And here’s a staggering thought – how much energy would it take to heat a swimming pool of water until it’s hot enough to wash up with?  Because that’s how much water and energy we waste every year in drawing off and discarding water until we get some that’s hot enough to wash up with. 

But that’s cold water isn’t it, you say?  Well, no.  Every time we draw off hot water, we leave a run of pipework of several metres filled with hot water, between the hot water tank and the tap.  This just sits in the pipe losing heat.  By the time we next need hot water it will be cold and will be discarded before the tap runs hot enough again.  Over the course of the year, we’ll waste about a swimming pool of water.  All of it will have started off as hot water, and all of it represents wasted fuel we’ll have paid for and never felt the benefit of. 

The Quooker quite simply cuts out all that waste of fuel and water. 

And that’s why we exerted ourselves – to invent a 100ºC boiling water tap to save you energy.   

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Why a Quooker is for Christmas as well as for life

Santa may have lots of little helpers, but in the kitchen there’s one helper that can make all the difference at Christmas.  You may never have thought of it this way before, but boiling water is a major component of a successful Christmas.

For a start, in the days leading up to Christmas so many of us get out the best glassware and give it a careful hand wash – you don’t always want to put your best crystal in the dishwasher!  Many of us will give the house an early spring clean too, washing floors and paint work, ready for fixing decorations and receiving visitors.  This can drain a tank of hot water in no time, but if you have a Quooker COMBI, you can enjoy hot water at any time without firing up the boiler or putting on the emersion. 

That’s before the cooking starts!  Every dish of potatoes, sprouts, carrots and peas means a pan of water on the hob.  A full pan of cold water can take up to ten minutes to heat up, and that’s quite a lot of energy and money being consumed too. 

By filling each pan straight from the Quooker, you start with boiling water in every pan so all you need to do is simmer to achieve perfect vegetables.  Every Christmas dinner needs gravy and this starts with stock – you need plenty of boiling water for that too.  Many of us find cooking the Christmas lunch quite stressful; the key to this is getting the timing right, and having plenty of boiling water on demand really helps – you only have to concentrate on cooking times – not on heating up water times – and we all know that a watched pot never boils.

Using a Quooker helps you win back precious time, keep everything under control and may even give you the leeway to put your feet up for a relaxing sherry!

With a delicious lunch eaten, there’s the washing up to tackle.  This is where the Quooker becomes your secret weapon.   Fiddly items such as mixers and beaters and potentially hazardous implements like sharp knives can all be rinsed clean in seconds with boiling water from the Quooker.  The Quooker COMBI is perfect for providing all the washing up water you need and the Quooker’s boiling water stream is great for getting rid of fat on pans or roasting tins. 

A Quooker can even help with the decorations if you’re partial to a candle or two.  You can make short work of old wax from used candles to clean candle holders in no time at all, ready for new candles and a warming festive display.

Installing a Quooker will improve your life all year round, but we’d certainly never be without one at Christmas! 

Have a wonderful festive season everyone, and here’s to a very prosperous New Year!

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Why we’re totally chilled to be boiling

When you stop to think how much we need boiling water, it’s not surprising that every home once had a kettle.  The earliest electric kettle was manufactured by Crompton & Co. in 1891, using the electrical heat radiator concept devised earlier by Colonel Rookes Evelyn Bell Crompton.  The kettle as we know it, with an immersed heating resistor, was devised in 1922 by Arthur Large of the Swan Company.   Unfortunately, that’s where the innovation stopped for several decades – until we took up the challenge. 

The kettle had some serious drawbacks – like the energy it consumed, the safety hazard it represented and the time it took to boil.  The inventors of the Quooker believed that true innovation was needed.  The challenge they set themselves, and the breakthrough that they achieved, was to produce the world’s only true 100ºC boiling water tap so that no-one would ever have to wait for a kettle to boil again.  They invented it to save time, energy, water and money while providing boiling water – safely – straight from the tap.  By doing so Quooker became the experts in boiling water. 

There are a host of benefits to having boiling water on tap, the most obvious being the ability to make tea and coffee straight from a Quooker tap – but there are plenty of others too.  Cooking pasta, rice and vegetables always involves boiling water, but in the past you either had to wait for a kettle to boil (several times for a large pan) or to heat cold water in the pan; both of which were time consuming.  Rinsing knives, whisks, beaters and pans clean now only takes moments with a boiling water tap, as does filling a hot water bottle, saving even more time.

In addition to the benefits of having boiling water on tap, there are unique advantages to having boiling water delivered from a Quooker tap.  The Quooker tap delivers boiling water in the most practical way possible, the patented design of the tap allows end users to rotate the tap spout 360 degrees and also allows vertical movement.  This means that when using the tap for whatever purpose the tap spout can be directed exactly where you wish the water to be delivered.  Furthermore, the aerated delivery of the 100 degree water is yet another safety aspect, helping to reduce accidents in any given household.

Occasionally, we are asked why we don’t provide a cold filtered facility on our boiling water taps.  The answer is twofold.

Firstly, we’re true to our speciality.  Other makers of hot taps can’t actually offer truly boiling water, so some do offer a combined hot and cold tap in order to compensate for the lack of 100ºC.  There’s often a dilution of expertise when you attempt to be all things to all people and we don’t compromise on excellence.

Secondly, there’s no real need.  Most of the UK has perfectly good drinkable tap water, which doesn’t need filtering, so a filtered cold tap is simply unnecessary – there’s no benefit in adding this as a feature. 

With a Quooker in a busy kitchen, if you’re using the boiling tap to help you with cooking, you can still fill a jug or glass of water for drinking from your standard cold tap.  When you’re entertaining and preparing a meal against the clock it’s a big help to have a separate cold tap and not have to ‘wait your turn’ to use a filtered tap. 

Some inventions make a profound impact on the society which they serve – fast forward a few years and we believe that the 100ºC boiling water tap will prove to be one of them. 

That’s why we’re totally chilled about being boiling. 

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Your questions answered

In this blog post, we'd like to take the opportunity to answer some of your questions.

Should you have any further questions, feel free to 'mention' us on Twitter - @QuookerUK, or leave a comment on our facebook page (links to which are at the end of this post).

I have noticed you have a COMBI, what is this?

The COMBI unlike the PRO series of VAQ’s dispenses exactly the amount of 100°C boiling water that is needed via the unique Quooker tap and also provides an instant supply of hot water (50-65°C) via your existing kitchen mixertap thus doing away with the need for a local heater and kettle in one go! This brilliant device means no more waiting for hot water, no more wasted energy, no more wasted water and no more wasted time.

Is the tap available in a left handed version?

All taps are delivered for installation on the right-hand side of the sink however you can change the handing of a tap during installation. Each tap is designed with full height adjustment and 360° rotation ensuring ease of use.

Do you offer different designs and finishes?

Quooker taps are available in four different styles and six different finishes so you will always be able to match it with your kitchen tap.

Do I need to buy a tap or can I use my existing one?

A Quooker is supplied complete with its own unique tap, all of which are specially designed and manufactured for delivery of boiling water. It is therefore an essential part and is included within the price.


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You don't have to waste energy...

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?