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Comment by orf | Hacker News Reader

More than 80% of households have a kettle in the UK, I would say 99%. That doesn't count businesses, shops or other places that will certainly also have a kettle.

We do love our tea.

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I worked at a company where they took away our kettle from the office kitchen. (They had just bought a wall heater that produced "quite hot" water, and thought that it would be safer if we just used that.)

Boy they got a lot of stick for that.

Did they also confiscate everyones scissors?

I don't even drink tea, and I have an electric kettle. In case any guests want tea. It's the "done thing", as they say.

I have an electrict kettle and not once though of it as a "tea making device". There are dozens of reasons I might need boiling water and it's most often used for making coffee.

Another good use is dual-core boiling. When I need boiling water for cooking, I put some water in a pot and turn on the stove. But I also put water in my 2 kW electric kettle and will have boilng water within a few minutes.

Good point. I've done this in the past (i.e. back when I was at university) - speed up cooking ramen noodles (or "super noodles") by pouring a boiled kettle into the hot pan.

But these days my kettle is almost solely used as a stand-by "tea making device" :)

It's not even really about our love of tea. I think it's mainly about the US power standard being too low voltage to deliver enough power to boil water in an acceptable time.

While my electric kettle here is only 1kW compared to a standard 3kW in the UK, how else should one boil water for tea? It's still as fast as heating on a hob.

3kW is faster than heating on a hob by enough to be worth the cost of cluttering your kitchen with an extra appliance. 1kW isn't, for many people.

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