How do you boil water....

[Arch]

No, I know you heat it up. I mean what sort of kettle have you got? I'm housesitting in a house that has a stove top kettle, whereas I usually use a jug style electric kettle. I really struggle to see why people have a stove kettle, which seems to take longer to boil and on which I seem to manage to scald myself every time, and which is more awkward to handle when full. And yet, I know of several people who have them. If oyu have a gas cooker, I guess it's useful standby in event of a power cut, but if you have an electric cooker, you don't even have that reason.... And doesn't a hob use more power than a kettle (I don't know, I've just assumed...)

Is it just a retro thing?

 

[rich p]

An electric kettle for me but I seem to remember hearing that it takes as much electricity to boil a kettle as that to power your electric lights for a whole evening. No stats on that though.

 

[Arch]

An electric kettle for me but I seem to remember hearing that it takes as much electricity to boil a kettle as that to power your electric lights for a whole evening. No stats on that though.

Probably more for me, then, as I generally run only 2 low energy bulbs in an evening. But my cooker is old and electric, and if I boiled water on that, I'd be wasting all the heat in the plates as it cooled down....

It's not just the power, I find the handle-over-the-top type kettle harder to pour...

 

[numbnuts]

I have this one

 

[HelenD123]

Electric for me. In a powercut a saucepan on my gas cooker could do the job temporarily.

My sister has a posh stove top one and it seems to take ages to boil.

 

[Fnaar]

Stove ones made sense in the olden days () when everyone was related to everyone else in the village, and everybody had the range burning all day to heat the house/dry the clothes/do the cooking and boil the water, and you had to have it going all day cos it took all day to get hot... now it's just a retro thang, I guess... we have a "range-style" cooker with 6 burners (and yes, they sometimes ARE all in use at the same time), but we don't have to go out and chop wood to get it going. Anyway, we were talking about kettles. Electric for me.

 

[Arch]

I'd be stuffed in a power cut. Well, unless I got my camping stove out...

I do have a storm kettle, which I could probably use on the windowsill, to avoid setting the smoke alarm off...

 

[beanzontoast]

Gas cooker, electric kettle. When I was a lad, we always boiled the kettle on the gas stove.

Nowadays, our electric kettle's one of those with a see-through scale where you can measure how much you've put in. In fact, we've put a mark on the side equivalent to 2 mugs of liquid so we don't waste energy boiling more than we need. We've also taken to refilling whenever we've just used it including before we go to bed as the water in the kettle next morning is never as cold as straight from the tap, and thus boils quicker.

 

[HelenD123]

I'd be stuffed in a power cut. Well, unless I got my camping stove out...

I do have a storm kettle, which I could probably use on the windowsill, to avoid setting the smoke alarm off...

You've just reminded me that I have a cute little camping kettle somewhere about which would be perfect on the stove top in an emergency.

 

[Maz]

Gas cooker, electric kettle. When I was a lad, we always boiled the kettle on the gas stove.

Same here. If the kettle had been whistling for too long, the whistle cap would shoot off under the pressure of the steam.

 

[badkitty]

Ok, so it's not actually a cauldron over a log fire, but I do use a big heavy old kettle on top of the woodburner in the living room during the winter. Saves a fortune, with the amount of tea thats gets drunk in this house.

now...where did I put that eye of newt.....

 

[Cranky]

An elderly stainless steel electric.

Like beanzontoast we're pretty careful about only using the right amount of water which we do by counting two seconds per cup when filling from the water filter jug. We also turn the kettle off as soon as it starts to boil as the timer now lets it go on forever.

That's a good point about refilling the kettle straight away so it takes less power to boil next time, although I suppose our water has usually been standing in the filter jug anyway.

I have to say (and a little OT) that since attending to these small areas of energy conservation our bills have dropped considerably in the last couple of years and we're still living comfortably.

 

[Night Train]

I have a cheap plastic electric jug kettle.

If you think you use a lot of energy making your brew then stop using Google, apparently two google searches use as much energy as making a cuppa.

 

[tyred]

I don't actually drink tea or coffee so I don't need a kettle very often.

 

[Arch]

I have a cheap plastic electric jug kettle.

If you think you use a lot of energy making your brew then stop using Google, apparently two google searches use as much energy as making a cuppa.

And you can't drink a google search!

My Mum's just got a new kettle - one of those where the base has the cord and the jug swivels on top of it, and the jug is clear glass (polycarbnate?), so it's very easy to see how much water is in there - no trying to read a fiddly little indicator strip.

So, does anyone have a reason why (unless you have an Aga or woodburner like badkitty) a stove top kettle is better? Not that there's anything wrong with choosing something purely for aesthetics...