Rather than butt in on the electricity prices thread I wonder if anyone has checked the gas meter before and after boiling a known amount of water and compared that with doing the same with an electric kettle. I assume the electric kettle gets 100% of the heat into the water and the gas about 30% but wondered if anyone had done a practical check?
Haven't had a gas kettle for decades, but I do recall when we first got an electric kettle, it was vastly faster to boil. I think it was 2400W, whereas the large gas ring (at the time) was around 3kW.
So I wouldn't be surprised if the difference was at least what you suggest.
Of course, an electric kettle isn't 100% efficient as it will lose some in heat loss to the outside and heating up the metalwork which you can't recover. Also, no electricity generation is anywhere near 100% efficient, so you can argue the inefficiency (probably around 50%) already happened before the electricity ever got to you.
The old electric kettle had an element well above the base too, so probably 4 cups min to cover the element, whereas kettles today have the element in the base and can boil just one cup. Indeed, I fill mine from the cup it's going to be poured in to, so there's no excess water heated.
Andrew
Thanks
For my interest I'm only concerned with the cost of gas verses cost of electricity at point of use to do the same job. Ignoring standing charges gas is about 8P/kWh and electricity 29p/kWh.
Both the gas and the electric kettles we can assume are heated from the base.
Also the larger amount of heat from the gas contributes to heating the airspace albeit with some associated water vapour.
Also Andrew ;-)
In winter I consider this "waste" heat to be a good thing - and the electric or gas kettle contributes its "waste" heat to heating up the house.
Back in the days of filament light bulbs, there was a performance space that was only bearable to play in during mid-winter if all the lights in all the chandeliers were turned on. How did they manage with the advent of LEDs? The building was sold and converted into apartments.
In summer - if we ever have a summer - any waste heat is -well- wasted. So IMO in summer it's better to minimise energy loss as far as possible.
Nick
Andrew Gabriel expressed precisely :
All of the few kettles I have had, where the element in the base, do seem to have a minimum water level marked on the side. Like you, I tend to ignore the minimum and I do wonder why they set the minimum so high when it is unnecessary. My present kettle is all glass, which makes it especially easy to see the level. It also has the advantage that it doesn't need a sight level tube so it cannot become blocked and inoperable, due to lime scale.
The marked minimum on ours is about 1 mug full, so except for occasional very small quantities (such as when making stuffing) it's pretty efficient.
No sight level tube, just a window in the metal side of the kettle - but we have extremely soft water anyway. Kettles last decades here!
Except the humidity from a gas kettle is a bad thing. And there's probably more water from burnt gas than many might imagine. That's in addition to the consequence of not automatically turning off when boiling!
Nanny state Elfin Safety and litigation. "I put water in the kettle went off to have a crap and a shower and when I came back it had all boiled dry and the kettle was melted to my worktop'
"I want £20,000 to replace my kitchin...
Today intelligent people understand clearly that rules are only for guidance, provided you don't want to litigate. I spent all day yesterday helping to feed a 45bhp wood chipper. On the side of it it said '118dbA' and had pictures of hard hats, goggles, face masks and ear defenders.
I just used thick gloves. I did get thumped on the head by an egg sized chunk of timber, when I was stupid enough to walk under the chip stream and it was loud feeding the hopper, But you could always walk away, OK?
In short they are saying effectively 'if you use this safety gear you aren't likely to even get slightly injured, if you don't, don't sue us and say we didn't warn you'
Actually, in winter, provided you don't get condensation, its a a very
*good* thing. Centrally heated insulated homes in winter have excessively low humidity.And there's
That's why they have banshee whistles on e,
It's when it spits a broken cutter knife up the chute when it gets dangerous, a more common experience than yo may expect. Even the railway clip that broke the blade comes out the chute at speed.
I put my tinnitus down to ill fitting chainsaw ear muffs over my spectacles instead of proper fitting chipper grade ear muffs or ear plugs as well
Railway clip? I agree that a broken blade is not a good thing. OTOH this was practically a brand new machine and we absolutely were not feeding any metal into it
I put mine down to chemotherapy about 15 years ago.
The spring clip that attaches the rail to the shoe which is bolted to the sleeper, it allows a bit of creep.
When they re tension the tracks they take bags of new clips and some old ones get discarded into the vegetation beside the track, probably hundreds of tonnes of the things loose out there, then when you are dragging stuff to the chipper in the middle of the night they get tangled up in the branches.
Not if the nearest railway line is 10 miles away. and if you are not a crim.
Chairs and keys or chairs and Pandrol clips, (there are other options) depending upon the type.
the shore is the chair IIRC., didn't the old bull head rails get fixed with a wooden wedge? Then there was something metal - perhaps that is what he meant by 'clip'. Then we went flat bottom long welded concrete sleeper and IIRC that had a strange semi spring driven in. Aha. That seems to be the 'Pandrol' clip.
I remember the ones in this photo, as well as wooden blocks on really old sidings
yes Pandrol clip
Known a 'pigtail' when I was a platelayer.
I rarely went on possessions but as an IWA I did get to see the aftermath and equipment left behind and we often worked on trees off track which is where I found an ancient rust yplate layer's hammer head which I subsequently turned into a splitting maul.
There's another sort that's made of round bar about 12mm diameter, vaguely Z-shaped.
Every time I see those clips I want to jump down onto the tracks with a big hammer and whack them in properly. Really upsets my OCD to see them halfway out. ;-)
Tim
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