Quooker/Hot Tap Energy Usage

[relicalpha]

Hey,

My wife is set on getting a Quooker hot tap, the only info I can find from them lists it at 511kwh/year. The kettle seems roughly 0.09kwh per boil, so say 1kwh/day, which makes the kettle sound a lot cheaper than quooker per year (water usage aside).

Sure I am missing something though given all the efficiency claims! Does anyone that owns one have some real world usage figures, maybe that 511 is maximum usage or something but it seems steep, and probably pushing £250/year at October's rates!

Thanks!

 

[chroniclard]

You dont get these to save money, you get them for convenience. The energy cost will be marginally less if you are a regularly boiling the kettle.

 

[VaderDSL]

I don't think the energy savings really come into a cold/hot/boiling water dispenser that costs over £1500

I think the 511kw/h figure is for the combi that provides the hot (not boiling water) presumably at a specified amount dictated in the relevant test/certification : NEN-EN 50440 Efficiency of domestic electrical storage water heaters and testing methods.

It seems to suggest the tanks will consume 10W standby, presumably to keep the water at the relevant temp (110C) when you use the boiling water, the tank heats/boils more to store presumably. The small tank uses 1.6kw the bigger tank uses 2.9kw, the combi uses 2.2kw

But as chroniclard says. ignore the energy side of it, you'll probably never see any energy savings based around the up front costs, £1500 ish for a Quooker vs £20 for a kettle.

 

[relicalpha]

Ok thanks for clarifying wishful thinking on my part!

 

[SizEzE]

We have one of these.

They are great for general use.

I have the 3 litre unit, the energy usage is very similar to boiling a kettle with the appropriate amount of water, in my experience.

Perhaps the most irritating/expensive thing that people do not mention is the servicing/maintenance . If you live in a hard water area, even with their filtration system it will clog up and need cleaning annually and the filter seal being replaced every two years. So its initial cost + cartridges £25.00 + service cost (if you cannot do it yourself) + element unit £115.00 (I've not needed this yet)

I like it, but not sure I'd buy another in a hard water area, just too much of a faff. Just buy a nice Vola tap, that will still be working in 50 years.

 

[-Ad-]

Ouch, that's a pain. We had a quooker in softy water Scotland and it was great.

Now moved down south to a hard water area and I'm not looking forward to installing the new one. I'll be looking to have a plumber add a softener/de-scaler setup where the water mains comes in, to help the Quooker and all other water type appliances.

 

[Martynt74]

Interesting, we have the Insinkerator one and live in a fairly hard water area and haven't noticed similar issues.

 

[SizEzE]

Unfortunately the water here is pumped directly out of the chalk. Its circa 350+ caCO3mg/l

 

[Scam]

Bump. Been looking at these recently. A Which article was stating that a kettle costs average 2.3p per boil, whereas a Quooker costs 3p per day in standby. Soooo…

What other brands out there are decent? Seen a brand called Ellsi that do a lovely traditional looking tap, for example.

 

[arknor]

You can boil a kettle in the time it takes to get a cup+spoon etc and be needing the water anyway
your wife just wants one to show off


you can probably get a wifi kettle u can start boiling from another room and it's ready by time you get there?

 

[d_brennen]

The cost is secondary for these sort of things. I mean you could walk everywhere for free* but chose to drive or use public transport. I toyed with the idea of one of these boiling water taps but decided against it, for hard water reasons.


*Shoe leather notwithstanding

 

[arknor]

The cost is secondary for these sort of things. I mean you could walk everywhere for free* but chose to drive or use public transport. I toyed with the idea of one of these boiling water taps but decided against it, for hard water reasons.


*Shoe leather notwithstanding

walking everywhere takes a lot of time, boiling a kettle doesnt

 

[Scam]

You can boil a kettle in the time it takes to get a cup+spoon etc and be needing the water anyway
your wife just wants one to show off

I don’t have a wife..

you can probably get a wifi kettle u can start boiling from another room and it's ready by time you get there?

Life is too short for Wi-Fi kettles. Sheesh. Plus what’s the point when it’ll invariably be empty and you have to, ya know, put water in it.

My other concern is for making coffee. Obviously you need less than 98c water for coffee (I think it’s 92c or something off the top of my head I dunno) which is easy to achieve from a kettle as you just let it sit for a minute after boiling. But with a tap it’s be daft to pour some boiling water into another receptacle to cool 5-10c then re-pour into your coffee (aero press is my brewer of choice). What taps let you easily swap between 98c and a different set temperature?

 

[Participant]

I love my gadgets and my tea, but have never convinced myself that I want one of these.

 

[b0rn2sk8]

We have one of these, not a Quooker mind, ours was considerably cheaper. It’s a ‘Qettle’ (4 in 1) with their 2l tank which is plenty IMO.

I have it hooked up to an energy monitor and it uses between 0.8 and 1.2kwh per day. Obviously the power consumption is dependent on how much you use it. 0.8kwh is the lowest I’ve seen over the last month so I’d suggest that is close to the minimum consumption you’ll see from it.

There is no way I’d believe any claims that one of these uses 3p a day in standby. At the current price cap that is about 0.1kwh, even in historic prices that’s only 0.2kwh of heat loss in a 24 hour period. That just seems unrealistic.

As others have said, you don’t have one of these to save money, it’s all about the convenience and it’s well worth it IMO and gets rid of worktop clutter.

I think ours was about £500 and DIY fitting was a doddle. They also do a water chiller for the cold filtered side but we didn’t have the space for it.

 

[Scam]

I have it hooked up to an energy monitor and it uses between 0.8 and 1.2kwh per day. Obviously the power consumption is dependent on how much you use it. 0.8kwh is the lowest I’ve seen over the last month so I’d suggest that is close to the minimum consumption you’ll see from it.

There is no way I’d believe any claims that one of these uses 3p a day in standby. At the current price cap that is about 0.1kwh, even in historic prices that’s only 0.2kwh of heat loss in a 24 hour period. That just seems unrealistic.

Thanks for the info. I know in my heart it wouldn't ever save money but to be fair the 3p/day claim was by Quooker who's interest it is to fudge the numbers

I've never ever got my head around energy pricing but looking at our latest electric bill we used 133kWh at 20.844p per kWh (£27.72 + £8.45 standing charge) for a month. So it'd cost perhaps 20p a day?

I've again looked at how much it costs to boil a kettle and it's confusing Say we boil the kettle 5-6 times a day that might be 10mins of boiling? So 20p*3kWh/6 is 10p per day? Am I doing it right? lol...

 

[jpaul]

that agrees with earlier thread,
In addition to the too hot for coffee/tea, concern, we do use britta filter water jug, for all water for those drinks, so tap would need to replace that functionality too,

I've got our Quooker tap plugged into a TP-Link smart plug with energy monitoring, and I've got a script which logs a bunch of metrics which has been tootling along for a couple of years.

This is what our power usage looks like for the past week:



On average the tap uses between 0.5 to 1 kWh per day, so between 7p and 14p ish.

it's our coffee machine that's the killer, (e: and we've made just 4 70ml cups of espresso)

made some calculations/ measures

coffee machine heat up 15mins/1st coffee 0.18 Kw/h 648KJ (330KJ would boil 1L water)
additional energy over 15minutes/2nd cup 0.06 Kw/h 216KJ

Say we boil the kettle 5-6 times a day that might be 10mins of boiling? So 20p*3kWh/6 is 10p per day?

best case for a kettle boiling a litre of water(from ~10C) is 0.09Kwh/L , so our 1.7l kettle boiled 5 times a day = 0.77Kwh

 

[b0rn2sk8]

Thanks for the info. I know in my heart it wouldn't ever save money but to be fair the 3p/day claim was by Quooker who's interest it is to fudge the numbers

I've never ever got my head around energy pricing but looking at our latest electric bill we used 133kWh at 20.844p per kWh (£27.72 + £8.45 standing charge) for a month. So it'd cost perhaps 20p a day?

I've again looked at how much it costs to boil a kettle and it's confusing Say we boil the kettle 5-6 times a day that might be 10mins of boiling? So 20p*3kWh/6 is 10p per day? Am I doing it right? lol...

Roughly yes, but obviously it’s dependent on how much water you use/boil above anything else. The more you fill the kettle, the more it costs.

 

[Scam]

Roughly yes, but obviously it’s dependent on how much water you use/boil above anything else. The more you fill the kettle, the more it costs.

I'm very bad at overfilling it (well, completely filling it) most times I use it. I absolutely can't stand putting hot drinks into a cold mug so I'm very OCD about filling my mug with boiled water to warm whilst I brew my tea/coffee.

And thanks for the above @jpaul

So, do all taps filter water ala Brita? Or is that an extra?

 

[b0rn2sk8]

Mine does as standard (Qettle tap) but I can’t speak for others.

They say the cartridges last 6 months, I’ve had the last one I for about 9, it’s still good. There are only two of us so there isn’t any need to change it after 6 months as it will not be getting anything like the throughout of a larger household.