A little while back, we covered Instant Hot Water Taps in one of our advice articles. We briefly touched on the matter of water usage/cost when compared to a Kettle, but today, we’d like to expand upon that point a little further.
How much does it cost to boil a kettle? How does that compare to a boiling water tap? That’s the main question you want answering, isn’t it? Well, the main perk of an Instant Hot Water Tap (and the one most likely to encourage potential buyers) is the sheer convenience it offers the user. As the name implies, they expel boiling hot water straight away, with no waiting time required. This means they can be used, and are often primarily used for, making hot drinks very quickly. They can also be used for tasks such as quickly Blanching vegetables if need be. For this reason, offices or other working environments might include them in their communal kitchen areas.
Kettle or Boiling Water Tap
So, they save on time, that’s an absolute certainty. But how much do they save you in terms of cost? Well, in theory, they should save you a few extra pennies- and indeed, a number of sellers claim that they will save on your water bills. One supplier offers two forms of Instant Hot Water Tap; one that produces both hot and boiling water, and one that produces only boiling water. These are priced between around £800 to £1100, depending on size and type.
Both include tanks sized between 3 to 11 litres which not only store the water, but also heat it electrically. The supplier claims that on average, their tanks should cost around 1p per litre, and only around 3p per day total depending on usage. Quite a noticeable difference between the average daily cost of a kettle, which according to one independently conducted study comes to around 5.46p.
However, that same study calculated that the actual cost of an Instant Hot Water Tap more realistically runs at around 5.27p. A far more minimal difference in costs, but ultimately over time it will begin to add up. And factoring in the convenience an Instant Hot Water Tap offers the user, we think it’s an acceptable trade off.