Put the Kettle on. (Feb 2011)

“If you are cold, tea will warm you. If you are too heated, it will cool you. If you are depressed, it will cheer you. If you are excited, it will calm you.” William Gladstone

OK, we all know, don’t we, that when we put the kettle on, we should only boil the amount of water that we actually need to boil?

Well, I’m ashamed to admit it, but only recently have I taken this seriously.  We had always left a bit of water at the bottom of the kettle for those bits of calcium carbonate to swim around in.

No more!  Just before Christmas we bought a shiny new see-through jug kettle with a scale up the side telling you how much water is in there.  Now we can put the exact amount of water that we need – two cupfuls for my extra-large mug – and we drain the kettle of water every time.  This saves energy and money – water has a very high specific heat capacity which means it takes a lot of energy to heat it up.  It’s estimated that over 1000 tonnes of CO₂ a day is wasted in the UK due to people putting too much water in their kettles! We have also started switching off the kettle manually rather than leaving it to turn itself off, saving several seconds of completely unnecessary energy use (and home condensation) each time.

And we have a further motivation: because the calcium carbonate “fur” precipitates out of the water as it evaporates and cools down, turning it off immediately it boils and removing all the water each time reduces the build-up of those gritty bits that float around in the water.

Thinking about this from a Christian perspective Jesus’ lifestyle provides principles for our lives. He shared teaching, food, shelter, and water with others. All these were precious gifts of God, shared and not wasted.

And now for a nice cup of tea together ……