Boiling up for tea/coffee? A money saving idea...

bud-miser

Here is something I've been doing for a fair while now... don't know whether it's been posted before.

If you have a source of heat anywhere in the house (ideally in the kitchen but an airing cupboard/cylinder arrangement is also ok) why not fill up a plastic bottle from your cold tap and position it near the heat source?

The idea is then to use THIS water for filling your kettle for teas and coffees. The water will have had the chill taken out of it (mine is even quite warm) and the kettle then boils sooner, saving you both time and electricity.

Note: use a clean bottle and use the water up same day as it is a PERISHABLE commodity. If you have any left at the end of the day, just add it to your toilet cistern.

Rikki

Why not fill a flask with boiling water and use that for hot drinks.:D

bud-miser

Thanks Rikki.

I'm one of those who like their beverages piping hot and I've never been able to find a vacuum flask which quite does the job by the time 10 - 12 hrs have elapsed. Otherwise yes, I'd be doing just that.

Rikki

I like mine really hot too. Mines all metal and its good for 4-6.

fudgem

I use a water filter jug, and, although I have no heat source in the kitchen except when the oven is on, the water in the jug is obviously warmer than straight out of the tap.

If I have hot water left in the kettle, I pour this into my vacuum flask and simply pour it back into the kettle to boil when needed.

Every little helps;)

comping_cat

I only boil what i need, so if its just a cup of tea for me, i boil the minimum amount as that will be enough!!!

bud-miser

Fudgem, you're right. Even ambient temperature is usually higher than that of mains water so the same principle applies, if to a lesser extent.

Cat yes, couldn't agree more. Combine the two ideas and you'd be saving even more.

bud-miser

Oh and by the way - the cumulative principle applies here obviously. Get into the HABIT of doing this every single day like any other part of your routine, and what is a tiny daily saving becomes not so tiny when x 365days x 20 years. Add it on to 10 or 12 similar such daily savings...

Luna69

Some good tips here.. my partner has been working from home since end of April and he drinks endless cups of coffee, therefore was boiling the kettle rather a lot during the day. I only have about 3-4 cups in a whole day so the kettle wasn't being used that much before that. So since last week after reading another thread on here we've been using the flask idea and it's gone down really well. The kettle is only being boiled less and he likes the idea that he can get instant coffee without waiting, so he was impressed.

Yvonne

recovering_spendaholic

This thread, for some reason, reminded me of when I used to live in Germany and people used this thing called a Taugsiegler. It was about as big as a biro but was spiral and it had a wire and plug on the end of it. You filled a mug with water, or soup or whatever and put the taugsiegler into it and it worked like an element and heated the liquid up. Apparantly it used very little electricity and until I was reading this thread I had forgotten all about them. Does anyone know if you can get such a thing here?

vivaladiva

I'm sure I've seen one, but it must have been a long time ago so I couldn't say where. I've no idea what one might be called here.