Boiling water from kitchen tap? Blind broken? Get a new window.

[Roger Mills]

Ah, an entirely different animal! A Quooker isn't an instant boiler - it holds a supply of pre-boiled water for instant dispensing. It ain't 30 quid either!!

[Roger Mills]

Mine doesn't. The spout swings round and be over the sink or the worktop. So you can stand the cup on the worktop under the spout and then turn the tap on. The knob of the tap has to be pressed down before it will turn - as a safety measure - but once on, you can leave it running hands-free.

[Roger Mills]

Yes, as I said earlier, the ain't cheap! My 3kW 7 litre Quooker Combi cost getting on for a grand. SWMBO deemed it worth it for the convenience. It certainly does everything she wanted it for, and does it very well.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Don't like the sound of that if it's for the elderly/disabled.

[Bert Coules]

Roger, do you notice any difference ion the taste of tea made with pre-boiled water over that made with freshly boiled, as recommended?

[dennis]

You can get frames for kettles so you don't have to hold it up to pour. I have seen them but I don't know where you buy them.

The tefal instant thing seems to be popular with people that can't manage a kettle.

[The Medway Handyman]

Ours is similar to this, but was only £30 at ALDI

[Bert Coules]

Thanks for the link. Does it produce water that is truly boiling, or simply extremely hot?

[Andrew Gabriel]

LCD windows exist, which go dark at the flick of a switch. They've come up a couple of times on Grand Designs, and a customer I used to visit in London occasionally has them in the glass conference room partitions. Damn expensive I suspect.

I think it started with hatchbacks whose seat fabric was rotted by the sun coming through the rear window. Citroen GS was infamous for this problem, and various internal and external louvre add-ons were available to try and address the problem.

[Andrew Gabriel]

The cost of PAT testing a basic kettle in an office where it's in constant use can be a significant factor. Because they aren't designed for such use, the retest period may be only one or two months, and the life probably less than 6 months.

[Dave Liquorice]

With kettle avaialbe for afiver from the big supermarkets don't bother testing at all just buy new every couple of months. New kit doesn't *need* to be tested, though a lot of Elves seem to think it does.

[Roger Mills]

Yes, it's a lot better - but mainly because we were using a kettle which seemed to taint the water!

In reality, the water coming out of the Quooker *is* freshly boiled. Although it is heated to and held at 110 degrees, the internal pressure prevents it from boiling until it comes out. There is also a filter on the boiling water outlet, which improves the taste.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I'd say a source of instant boiling water very useful in an office - no waiting around for a kettle to boil. Not so sure it would be at home, though.

[The Medway Handyman]

Boiling. If it hasn't been used for a while (first thing in the morning for example) we run off say half a cup, then make tea.

[charles]

A couple of years ago, I bought four new disco quality lights - just for the hell of it, I PAT tested them. One failed!

[Robin]

Do you also have a filiter on the incoming side or live in a soft water area?

I ask as I looked at a Quooker to remove the risk of boiling kettles for someone who ain't what she was. But given how much scale she gets in a vacuum flask after a few litres of water I reckoned the Quooker would be solid in short order - and I read stories of others finding that was so. Quooker blame the water companies; and offer a filter or descaling kits- see

But I sceptical about the effects of the filter and nervous about the costs of descaling (the more so if I'm no longer around so someone has to be paid to dio it).

[Roger Mills]

No, there's no specific filter on the input[1]. We live in a moderately hard water area, so scaling was a bit of a worry. We've only had it a few months - and so far, so good - but time will tell. I envisage having to de-scale it every couple of years or so.

[1] We do have one these 'snake oil' gizzmos on the incoming mains - with wires wrapped round the pipes - but I don't imagine that does anything all that useful!

[David.WE.Roberts]

We have these inside our new(ish) bifold doors.

Expensive to buy and replace but not that expensive.

It also means that you don't have to work out a way to have blinds or curtains for privacy which can cover part or all of a 4.7 metre opening which can be anything from fully closed to fully open.

For curtains, you need space either side of the opening to hold a lot of curtain material.

For blinds, you have all sorts of issues with multiple blinds and flapping in the breeze if the doors are partly open.

We declined the electric ones, and the magnets work very well.

So far (about a year now) they have worked really well and more than justified the extra cost - although the saving by not having to buy free standing curtains or blinds has eased the pain.

Cheers

Dave R

[Bert Coules]

Thanks for that. I liked the relative simplicity of the magnetic sliding design at the show, except for the fact that to close the blind completely the magnet had to be slid right down to the bottom of the door, calling for a bit of athleticism, or at least fitness.

[Jethro_uk]

Cars stopped rusting top down ?