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Comment by teamonkey | Hacker News Reader

Coming from the UK I can't believe that only 80% of households own an electric kettle. The idea of going to someone's house and not finding a kettle seems genuinely ludicrous. Not just houses - almost every break room of every business will have one.

Of course, they cost quite a bit less on average in the UK.

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Maybe the other 20% own non-electric kettles, like us, or have one-touch boiling water systems, like my parents.

When our last electric kettle blew up 3-4 years ago, we decided to go with a good, old fashioned metal kettle that we use on the hob. Works well, doesn't ever break, and even makes it a bit more of an 'event' to put the kettle on as you get all the boiling sounds, the whistle going off, etc.

My parents, on the other hand, have a thing that produces boiling water at the touch a button so they just use that to dump water into their mugs instead.

Either way, an electric kettle is far from the only solution .

Maybe the other 20% own non-electric kettles

You mean those old fashioned kettles that are little more than a pot that you put on the hob? Nope. No way do 20% of UK houses have that sort of old fashioned system. That's like claiming 20% of UK houses still have outhouses and don't have indoor toilets.

It always amazes me how the ridiculuous old fashioned non-electric kettles are still popular in USA.

Don't forget they have 110v but the same current limits on their plugs, so at best their kettles will use 1.5kW. The speed advantage isn't there.

If you have a hot water-based appliance the coffee maker offers far greater convenience. Now you have even less reason for a kettle.

I've not found coffee makers terribly convenient for making tea.

I know you are kidding but the pod/cup 'coffee' makers support tea too, now that is certainly convenient :)

I did also mention boiling water systems like one touch "Quick Cup" type jugs or even boiling water taps as are popular in posher houses now.

Nonetheless, I don't find it so farfetched. We are a wellish-to-do gadget heavy household and we're content with a gas kettle. Other people continue to drive manual transmission cars. Some people even use Internet Explorer! It's a funny old world.

Funny you should mention transmission. Something like 80% of cars in the UK are manual transmission.

> It always amazes me how the ridiculuous old fashioned non-electric kettles are still popular in USA.

One thing that I find genuinely amazing is that power-companies can spot when there are commercial-breaks in TV programs by people in the country making tea en masse:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_pickup

Not only can they see the spike, they have to plan for it. I've heard for some popular programmes/events (like a sports event or popular episode), they'll employ someone to watch the TV show and press a button the second the adverts come on, to turn on the power generators that can spin up quickly. There's a power generator that can come fully into operation in 12 seconds[1]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_power_station

Well here's one data point: my building includes gas in the rent, so there's no incentive for me to buy an expensive and costly to run electric kettle when a stovetop model can boil an unlimited amount of water for zero marginal cost.

(I'm originally from the UK, but I adapted pretty quickly when I moved to the US and saw the price of electric kettles).

Probably due to their popularity, eletric kettles can be gotten for very cheap in the UK (<£5).

Wait, a kettle[1] that you put on the stove and whistles when it's boiling isn't the standard in the UK?

It's what I use for preparing hot water, and I have no issue with it. That's when I want tea or french-press coffee [2]. Sometimes I use an electric percolator[3] for coffee, and what a cup it can make!

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Stainless-Teakettle-Litres-Whistling-X...

[2] http://www.amazon.com/Bodum-Brazil-French-Coffee-34-Ounce/dp...

[3] http://www.amazon.com/Presto-02811-12-Cup-Stainless-Coffee/d...

Wait, a kettle[1] that you put on the stove and whistles when it's boiling isn't the standard in the UK?

Nope, it's a hilarious anacronism. Like seeing a washboard to hand wash your clothes. :)

Nope. In UK and even in Australia where I am, electric kettles are the norm. My grandmother did use a stovetop kettle though.

Stove top kettles are used but they are less efficient than electric kettles.

240v 13a is handy for things like kettles.

I have never seen a stove-top kettle in use at someone's house in the UK, and I lived there almost all of my life.

I've seen precisely one stove-top kettle in my life, here in the UK: My grandmother owned one before she died, but she spent most of her life on a farm with outdoor toilets and no electricity, and never really adapted from that mindset.

Having said that I've bought only two kettles in my life, once in 1998 when I bought my first flat and realized I didn't own one - all prior rental properties came with one - and one last year when that died.

I remember spending far too much time picking up kettles in John Lewis, and other "fancy" stores, because I knew I'd be using it multiple times a day for many years and wanted something that looked and felt nice.

How often does the average Briton drink tea?

Kettle on the hob sounds so much more fun then boiling water at the touch of a button.

I feel like there needs to be some ceremony to the tea making, it cant just be pored from a tap there needs to be some kind of wait preceding it.

Drinking tea in the UK isn't about the fun of the kettle. It's a matter of necessity and the whole process is utilitarian. An efficient and predictable water boiler is what is needed, not a 'fun' tea making ceremony. The English largely drink the fannings of tea leaves (poorest quality) it's not about ceremony, fun, or quality, believe me.

We only drink tea when people visit, so the kettle does play a role. Being gas, it takes longer to boil, giving a nice period of often tea-related small talk before it's shrieking for mercy. If one is in an office or one drinks tea because one's addicted to it then yes, the kettle would be more of an inconvenience, but not everyone lives such fast, non ceremonial lives.

I feel you are not embracing the tea drinking enough.

I am well aware what the English drink, being one of them and all!

I suspect it is somewhere around 80%.

It seems inconceivable to me that a US house might not have a microwave (even unfurnished apartments I rented from slumlords in college came with microwaves), but apparently many do not: http://www.eia.gov/emeu/recs/appliances/appliances.html

No. Microwaves are a general cooking thing, and relatively new. Not considered necessary. Tea, in the UK, is so ingrained in the culture, and has been around so long, that kettles are almost like cutlery. I can't imagine a house or business in the UK without one. Hell, you even find kettles in vans out on site. Where there is a Brit, with in about 20m, you'll find a kettle, and a tea bag.

The only exception to that could well be from recent immigrants. They may not be in to tea in the same way, and may not be so wedded to the kettle. Even then, one British thing immigrants quickly pick up, possibly to help integrate, its drinking tea.

In short, dont mess with the British and our tea.

Oh, BTW.

Im British, I can't stand tea. Nasty foul bitter bile. Who the hell likes this stuff? Surely only sadists actually like tea? I like coffee.....

British tanks since the Centurion[1] all contain kettles or boiling vessels for tea. Don't mess with their tea, even in the heat of battle!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centurion_tank

that's amazing. and for anyone who is curious about what they actually look like: http://www.militarysystems-tech.com/military-gallery/electro...

Nasty foul bitter bile.

Mnay teas are not at all bitter. Did you only try the cheap tea? PG Tips, Tetley, Typhoo, that sort of thing? The cheap stuff is horrible.

New or not, I literally cannot picture a home without a microwave. My best guess is that most are the homes of immigrants.

I don't have a microwave. The only use I'd have for one is heating the occasional ready meal for my child, or heating milk for drinks. These are rare so I haven't bothered buying one. I have a fridge but it's not plugged in.

Interestingly I live in the UK and have neither a microwave nor an electric kettle. Incidentally, I am technically an immigrant (from the US), though not with the connotations of what I assume you were envisioning.

"I own a house without a microwave, ask me anything”?

Seriously, though: never saw the point. I do all my cooking from scratch, and heat up leftovers on the stove. Once every few months I find myself doing something where it would be more convenient to have a microwave, but it’s no more often than I find myself wishing I had a sous-vide cooker or a bread machine or electric kettle or any number of other kitchen gadgets. We have a smallish kitchen, and I’d rather have more counter space to work on when I’m cooking.

Thanks for mentioning Sous Vide. I found it interesting that a precisely temp controlled waterbath product only costs a little more than the crude kettles mentioned in the article, and the internet is full of folks who put great effort into creating homemade $40 sous vide rigs.

Also despite what the article claims, water doesn't boil at one temperature, if you program a PID or whatever to keep on firing until the water hits 100C you'll be in for a bit of a surprise in Denver or some mountain towns which are much higher than Denver. I know Big Sky MT is about 9000 ft ASL, water boils at 190F or so.

I guess I'd ask how you got a house without a microwave. I've never lived without a microwave, but I have never purchased a microwave either.

An oven, a microwave, and a fridge are the three appliances I have been able to count on always being present when I move in somewhere. Typically the microwave is build into the cabinetry.

Apparently the previous owner didn’t feel the need to have one either. Note that we are discussing a house that was rebuilt from a barn in 1938 (no one really knows how old the barn was at the time). There are no kitchen cabinets into which a microwave might be built, just open shelves, which I find quite satisfactory.

When I redo the kitchen, I’ll add a range hood, but the next owner will also be buying a house without a microwave.

I think it's a regional thing. Every house I have owned came with the washer, dryer, fridge and stove. Even after I substantially upgraded the stoves in my first two houses, I left them there when I moved. Those houses were built in the 1950's and 1980's. Only my current house, built in the early 2000's came with a microwave.

OTOH, I'm told it's common in other parts of the country (I'm in the upper Midwest) to take major appliances when you move.

Speaking as someone with a commercial-grade sous-vide bath and variable-temperature PID-controlled pouring kettle sitting on his worktop, a microwave is also a useful gadget even for high-end cookery.

It's one of the best ways to cook many green vegetables, for example, and also makes remarkably good poached eggs:

http://www.bonappetit.com/test-kitchen/inside-our-kitchen/ar...

It’s not that I don’t think they’re useful; rather that the marginal utility (for us) of having one isn’t worth the kitchen space that it would cost us. Once every few months I wish we had one, but once every few months I wish I had lots of things. I try not to make a habit of rushing out to buy them.

Heating up a stove takes considerably more energy than using a microwave.

On my microwave, it takes about 96,000 joules (800W x 2') to heat up a plate with leftovers, while doing it on my oven it takes around 432,000J (1800W * 4').

You just described coffee makers in the US. Tea kettles on the other hand... can't recall ever seeing one in real life.

"Overall ownership of kettles has declined from 83 per cent of the population in 2008 to 78 per cent in 2012."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2262020/Humble-kettl...

Seems to be a confusion of terms. 80% of the population is not normally the same as 80% of households.

I was pulling reasonable numbers out of the air to do an order of magnitude/what would you have to believe analysis.

It's unclear from that article what "ownership" means, given that a kettle is a household-level item, I'm not sure if it would matter if you did your survey as "do you own a kettle" or "is there a kettle in your house" -- they should sum up to about the same percentage. Maybe a smaller percentage of the population would say they own a kettle than would say they have one in their house due to different interpretations of what it means to "own" something. I'd expect those differences to be within the margin of error of most surveys.

Not to mention work places. If someone doesn't own a kettle at home, but there is a kettle at work that they use to drink tea, then they essentially are part of the UK kettle-culture.

"80% of the population is not normally the same as 80% of households."

Sure, but I was surprised by how low the figure was. I would have expected it to be more like 90-95%.

We can buy budget kettles for £5 in supermarkets. Plastic, not nice, but functional.

Yeah. In fact, my current kettle cost £2.99. That was 6 ish months ago.

I buy them, and treat them as throwaway. They seem to last as long as £30 ish kettles, so why bother spending more? My cheapo ones last about a year, then I just get a new one. Awful for the environment, but there you go.

They also last 2-3 years at most ime. There was a time my old office had the kettle break every 3-4 months.

Yeah, but think how many times an office kettle boils compared to a household one.

For the sake of the previous argument, however, this hardly matters. If the fraction is 100%, then 30 models of kettles can be supported at 100k/year. This is an order of magnitude argument, not a precise census.

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