Hot water bottle exploded ***title edited by Mumsnet HQ to clear up any confusion***

Same with tyres - supposed to be replaced every few years, even if plenty of tread left - the rubber degrades over time.

Expensive surprise last time DS had a service for his low mileage 8 year old car that was still on the original tyres!

@AlmondsAreGreat but do keep it! It's a lovely, sentimental thing to have isn't it?

I use fire bags rather than hot water bottles......I've just checked and there are no expiration dates - hopefully if one was going to burst it would do it while being boiled rather than when being used for heat.

However, I thought this thread was going to be about soda stream bottles which I was amused to discover have an expiry date. DH says it's due to the pressure from the bubbles, but if one were to burst although you'd get very wet you wouldn't be scalded.

My grandma had stone hot water bottles.

I'm pretty sure the last one I bought was silicone. It's translucent. All the ones available in our town at that time (about 10 years ago) were the same material, whatever shop they were in. I'll have to check if the same applies to them. I don't use it but my son does very occasionally, when he's visiting. When I was a child, ours were steel. They had to be wrapped very carefully and put into the bed well in advance of anyone getting in.

It does happen. Lots of them say in the small print "replace after five years". When not using them, it's best to store them empty, with the stopper removed.

When filling, remember it is important to expel the air, which makes it less likely to burst: air can be compressed, water cannot. Fill it about two thirds full; and if pouring straight from the kettle, without a funnel, pour SLOWLY, otherwise the hot water can splash. To expel the air, hold the bottle by the neck, and lower it against a flat surface, until the water appears at the top. Then put the stopper in.

As an aside, a book I have describes a Victorian doll-shaped bottle, bearing this rhyme:
Patty Comfort's a rubber-lined dolly,
To hug any other is folly.
When filled full of air,
She's light and she's fair,
And filled with hot water she's jolly.

There's also the lovely book from the 1970s Phoebe and the Hot Water bottles, in which seven-year-old Phoebe loves her one hundred and fifty-seven bottles, and treats them like dolls and pets. It's now sadly out of print, and very difficult to buy, because some of the attitudes of the time don't sit well today (giving children puppies as presents, and putting out fire yourself).

You dodged a bullet there OP, my work colleague had a terrible experience when one burst on his foot, it was so bad he had to have skin grafts and a huge amount of time off work. He's left with awful scars.

Lots of things are made in China, I find it weird how some people have such a knee jerk reaction that made in China= bad. Especially over a rubber hot water bottle! Rubber degrades no matter where it’s made, most people know hot water bottles aren’t for life 😂

Newer ones all have an expiry date - it’s a little daisy wheel with the year in the middle and month on a petal.

I think infrequent use is worse, because the deterioration gets severe and then you have explosions rather than a less dramatic tearing.

Glad you didn't get scalded OP! And thanks for this post, we'll be digging ours out shortly I'm sure, so we will definitely check the expiry dates!!

Thank goodness you escaped a scalding. As others have said, rubber perishes over time, especially if you put boiling water in them. During heatwaves there are often posts on here suggesting filling a bottle and then freezing it, which is all very well until you want to use it for hot water again in the winter...

A colleague of mine really seriously burnt herself like this, so for all the "well mine is made of sterner stuff" people be warned - they're fine until they're not... seems daft to risk serious burns not to replace them!

Here is the other thread, it was May this year.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5068468-to-remind-you-all-to-throw-out-old-hot-water-bottles?reply=135266291

I think quality also differs store to store. I have one from Boots and one from Primark, the Boots one seems better quality.

Yes, I read that thread, and chucked ours out - well over ten years old - and bought a new one.

I don’t remembers the one I had as a child being replaced. Perhaps the rubber was thicker/stronger then.

God, I thought they lasted longer than that! I’ll need to replace mine I guess.

HRTWT but I read somewhere that there is a date on the inside of the top of each hot water bottle. Mine had them and were so old I replaced them. They need replacing every few years.

Yes, was it in the spring? I remember I would still have been using mine for a few days, but binned them all immediately. For the price of a new one it’s not worth keeping them.

NHS says to replace every 2 years which seems madness to me. Maybe that applies to people who use it very frequently.

I had no idea there was an expiration date.

This pops up in the news every now and again

think the problem us years ago everything was of a higher quality ( which was reflected in the price)
nowadays it’s a disposable world much cheaper last a fraction of the time

think help the aged or some like that did a campaign and swapped out new for old hit water bottles

tbh I’m only aware of this as saw it in a tv program once mine were years old

A woman on here posted the dangers of using an expired hot water bottle in bed after hers burst on her back and legs. It was absolutely awful. I will find it later

Thank goodness you didn't burn yourself

Rubber deteriorates

This happened to a colleague, they had severe burns on the shoulder and back. No signs there was anything wrong with it beforehand, so I threw ours out and bought new as they were 10 years old at least,