Does anyone have one of those Quooker boiling water tap things?

[BuzzBuzzBuzzLightyearToTheRescue]

I’ve just seen an advert for one and I’m curious.

are they worthwhile? How much do they cost?

how do they work?? Do they not cost a fortune if they are maintaining boiling water all the time?

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It uses exactly the same amount of energy!

Jesus, did you people all fail physics? Please show me where the specific heat of water is different because you have a special tap. I’ll get the Nobel Prize ready.

Per unit volume, you are using EXACTLY the same amount of energy. Always. The only way around this by COST, is to have GAS. Because gas units are cheaper.

I've got one.
It's handy and a cool gadget, but most definitely not an essential.

It's a bit of a PITA when you're trying to take the chill off the paddling pool for a pair of precious princes, or fill a bucket to mop.

I like having instant warm water, no running the tap for ages before it comes through.

Quooker heats the water to 100*C - I hear some cheaper alternatives only get to 94-ish so that might affect the tea taste.

Amazing but ridiculously expensive. I don't have one but we've fitted a couple. One of the gadgets though that you'll genuinely wonder how you lived without.

There's been quite a lot of research. Hot water taps are cheaper to run because you cannot boil exactly the amount you need in a kettle due to min fill requirements (plus of course, it's very hard to judge exactly), plus energy wastage from heat loss. However, due to the large cost of buying a hot water tap, and cost of filters etc, the small energy savings means they will not pay for themselves over their lifetime.Article explains.

Are they safe enough regarding children? I am sure there is a lock/setting but is it really safe?

This has been a solved problem for twenty years. I’ve had Breville hot water dispensers that dispense exact amounts from espresso size cup to hot water bottle via an adjustment pressurestat.

If you boil a full kettle all the time when you want a single brew, then yes, the tap works out better. Or, for under £100 as opposed to £1000, you can get any number of variable dispense volume kettles.

Trying to argue to toss over the economics makes no sense - the upfront cost + fitting massively outweighs a kettle either way. I'm very clear it's an absolute luxury item, but it's one that I love.

I'm convinced people complaining about funny tastes aren't actually talking about Quookers, but different brands.

Yes, @McConkeysPlate - they all have a lock mechanism. With the Quooker, you have to push the ring twice in quick succession then twist. I'm absolutely confident in it from that point.

Absolutely this. It is a luxury convenience, and as you say, has much higher initial outlay and maintenance costs. But if you have less space for kettles and Soda Streams (anyone even use the carbonation mode?), then go for it.

I heard good things about the Abode versions of these. Plenty of alternatives to Quooker, unsure if better.

"frees up counter top space" but also........
"takes up most of a cupboard for the tank"

Am I the only one thinking thats not a bonus? A kettle on the worktop is not a problem to me at all - a large part of a cupboard being taken up with a water tank and other quooker gubbins would be a total pain.

We have a small kitchen, we had to choose between a quooker or a water softener. Three years on and the shower still looks like new, no watermarks, I would rather boil a kettle than clean clean (as opposed to a quick squeegee) a shower.

All this talk of how much they cost to use is completely dwarfed by the £1500-2000 that a Qwooker costs to buy! We're just in the process of putting in a pretty expensive kitchen, but I really didn't see the appeal of a Qwooker. I really don't mind waiting a few minutes for a kettle to boil. And I find the thought of instant boiling water coming out of a tap a bit scary from a safety point of view.

@sparechange

Off topic, but I can't resist asking if the restaurant is Clove Club?

OP,

When we put in the quooker, I swore I was never giving up tea made with a kettle. A year on, I honestly don't think I've boiled the kettle once. It makes fabulous tea, and I love having sparkling water at the turn of a tap. We're just about to replace the filter for the first time after a year of very heavy use.

It's great no need to buy any bottled water and fantastic to have sparkling water on tap.

We're in the process of designing a new kitchen and I was about to post about exactly this.

Am leaning towards a Quooker with the thingy that also gives filtered cold water as we live in a very hard water area.

Qettle is much cheaper than quooker. At least it was 18 months ago.

I really want one but they are so ugly. Currently redoing our kitchen and can't decide between quooker for its spec or perrin and rowe for its beauty!

I had the same quandary and ended up putting the Dornbracht I wanted in the kitchen and Quooker in the utility (just off the kitchen) .

Imagine a large thermos flask with an immersion heater in it.

It has a vacuum so that's good as it does reduce heat loss.

I put in 1 kg of water in. It's cold - so I have to supply energy to boil it. Enough energy to change the temperature of 1 kg of water from 18c to 100c
It could cool down, although the vacuum does reduce the loss of energy.
But I want boiling water - so I keep the immersion on so it's constantly keeping the water at 100C - that's not a lot of energy .That's the standby mode of 10 watts - so about 0.24 KWH per day (6p at current rates)

You then take out 200g of water. You are left with 800g in. This water is replaced with cold water - so the temperature has reduced. You then have to supply energy to raise 1 kg of water to 100 C again. (This is the same amount of energy as you would need to raise the 200g of cold water to 100 C because....physics)

So you supply energy.

This is why it only costs 6p a day if it's just on standby mode and you don't take any water out. If you actually use it to get boiling water, you then have to supply energy to boil the water you replace it with.

Of course, you can just get the exact amount of water out - so that's good. It only works if you take out less than the minimum amount of your kettle. So 1 small cup. Otherwise, you would just be able to use a kettle.

If you didn't replace the water, then effectively you have boiled 1 kg of water, kept it warm using an immersion heater and then slowly used it all up. You then need to add more water and reheat it.

It's all to do with specific heat capacity, joules and kinetic energy.

This.

Quooker can't escape the laws of physics.

The article states:

"You mention that it costs three pence per day to boil water from the tap, but this is the energy cost when it is on standby. So even if never used the tap would cost around £10.95 per year."

If you are the kind of person who only uses small amounts of boiling water (less than your kettle's minimum fill) and you are the type of person who has a lot of drinks a day, then the energy costs could be cheaper than a kettle - as you may be wasting a bit of energy on the minimum fill. But you are constantly heating the water so you would need to justify this by having lots of drinks.

They cost a lot - and have a lot of maintenance costs with filters - so I wonder what the payback time would be.

We can taste the difference. The filtered water is nowhere near as nice as the filtered water from other systems either. That said, we have some of most delightful tap water I have ever tasted and I don't want anything at al spoiling it.