electric kettle, combi boiler or gas hob to heat water to wash dishes

ebjb

Anybody know if it's cheaper to use an electric kettle, combi boiler or gas hob to heat water to wash dishes. Also is it cheaper to boil kettle or boil on gas hob to make a cuppa? It takes ages for hot water to come through to the sink from the combi boiler (which is in the kitchen) - it runs from cold to warm to hot) and I often think it's easier to boil an electric kettle - but is it cheaper?

Jolaaled

ebjb wrote: »

Anybody know if it's cheaper to use an electric kettle, combi boiler or gas hob to heat water to wash dishes. Also is it cheaper to boil kettle or boil on gas hob to make a cuppa? It takes ages for hot water to come through to the sink from the combi boiler (which is in the kitchen) - it runs from cold to warm to hot) and I often think it's easier to boil an electric kettle - but is it cheaper?

I've been wondering about this exact thing too!
I've started to use the electric kettle to boil water for smaller amounts of washing up...hot water from my combi takes ages to come through and, although i collect this cold water for the garden in hot spells, it does seem so wasteful.

Re: boiling water on the hob vs. kettle: i did read somewhere, that a hob on the pan is much less energy efficient as the actual pan has to heat up and much energy is therefore wasted.

HTH!

panchenlama

kettle will be cheapest (and fastest) as it involves minimum waste of both heat and water

phill99

panchenlama wrote: »

kettle will be cheapest (and fastest) as it involves minimum waste of both heat and water

But if you are doing a lot of washing up you will need more than one kettle full which takes more time.

A saucepan on the hob certainly isn't effective.

I can't help thinking that in the big scheme of things, whatever way you opt, the difference to your annula energy bill will be insignificant and virtually non-measureable.

notatvstar

Ahhh... I may have the answer. The previous winter (the one before last) when the Heavens just dumped snow on everyone, we suffered a 'brown-out' over the Christmas and New Year season. The snow had cause our power supply lines to freeze together and the whole thing fused. I'm calling it a brown out as our cottage is really well Earthed and so we could get just enough power to operate a laptop, but not enough for lights, TV etc. It took 2 weeks before we got power back. Unfortunately something caused the circuit on our boiler to fry and so we had to wait 4 weeks (yep...) for an engineer to come and fix our boiler.

During our boiler-free time, we had no central heating and no hot water. Luckily enough we have an open fire in the lounge (we slept in the lounge in sleeping bags (zipped together! - nice and cosy), but we had to boil all our water for washing and washing-up on the stove and using kettles.

Our gas and electricity bill for that quarter went through the roof!