How long does it take to boil a kettle in USA?

[Digby]

I hear electric kettles aren't much of a thing over there and you are on 120v mains anyway, so...how do you boil a kettle and how long does it take?

 

[RayDunzl]

It depends on your altitude above sea level as well as the amount of water in the kettle among other considerations.

Here in Florida we go more for ice than steam.

"A few minutes" if that helps.

 

[Tom C]

Is it because coffee is more common than tea? I enjoy tea, but for me it’s a special occasion, and pretty much only when traveling. Coffee is my daily pour, and I have a coffee maker that takes maybe five minutes start to finish. I would expect that to be common in USA. The only time I boil water is for potatoes or pasta or something like that, so I use the gas stove.

 

[TimW]

Many people here have gas stoves which are pretty quick compared to the cheap electric coil units. The modern electric solution is induction which may not be as affected by mains voltage. I know many people with electric kettles so I would say they are a popular thing here, but I live in the Seattle area.

 

[levimax]

Electric stoves in the US are 220 volts so no difference. For a counter top electric kettle even though they are 110 they still use ~1200 watt heating elements so again no difference. I have used gas and electric stoves to boil water and don't notice a lot of difference. Fastest way to boil water I have experience with is a Aga stove. Always on with special machined flat heating surfaces and special machined flat pots and pans.

 

[fpitas]

I hear electric kettles aren't much of a thing over there and you are on 120v mains anyway, so...how do you boil a kettle and how long does it take?

As levimax touched on, we have split-phase 230V coming down from the center-tapped pole transformer for large appliances.

 

[Deleted member 21114]

My goodness have I got the video for you. Technology Connections is a great little channel.

 

[punosion]

I didn’t conduct an entirely scientific test, but I just did a test with my $20 Costco-special Hamilton Beach kettle. I eyeballed and filled to the 1L mark on the side with ~60F water, the kettle hit a full boil and turned off at 5:39.

 

[DVDdoug]

I used to know somebody with an electric kettle but I never timed it.

and you are on 120v mains anyway

It's wattage that makes heat and most plug-in heating devices are around 1200W (or less).

Our standard circuit breakers are 15 or 20 Amps. 120V x 15A = 1800W so that's generally the maximum if there's nothing else plugged-into the same circuit (sharing the same circuit breaker) and I've seen some hair driers rated for 1800W.

We do have 240V "split phase" coming into our homes half of the house on one phase/branch and half the house on the other.

If you have an electric kitchen there is a 240V outlet for a stove/oven. The utility room almost always has 240V for an electric clothes drier, and some people have electric water heaters which are also 240V. There is a dedicated circuit breaker for each 240V outlet and I think 30A is standard.

I'm in California and my stove, water heater, and furnace are natural gas and I have an electric clothes drier.


Oh.... Some people have 240V in their garage for a welder or a car charger.

 

[Ken1951]

For the most part, kettles are not a "thing" here in the US. Coffee drinkers way outnumber hot tea drinkers. My wife drinks tea and uses an electric kettle. Me, I like my caffeine cold!

 

[fpitas]

For the most part, kettles are not a "thing" here in the US. Coffee drinkers way outnumber hot tea drinkers. My wife drinks tea and uses an electric kettle. Me, I like my caffeine cold!

I'm a heathen and use the microwave to make tea

 

[raindance]

I use an electric kettle because it's way faster than the gas stove and I like to drink tea and make french press coffee.

We English like to use water that is actually hot for tea; most tea you order here in the USA is served lukewarm (and just of the tea here requires you to use two teabags to make something drinkable, but this is another discussion altogether).

 

[sergeauckland]

Our electric kettle is rated at 3kW and will boil enough for a cup of tea in seconds. Quite a few of our appliances are 3kW rated, as that's within the capacity of our normal 13 amp sockets to provide.

Similarly, in France our sockets provided 16 amps, so 3kW appliances worked fine.
S

 

[antcollinet]

I hear electric kettles aren't much of a thing over there and you are on 120v mains anyway, so...how do you boil a kettle and how long does it take?

My experience is it takes about the same time - but the kettles hold half the amount of water

 

[voodooless]

I guess it will depend a lot on the kettle material. Stainless steel is much harder to boil than plastic

 

[ahofer]

I use our electric kettle all the time. It takes a few minutes. I did notice it was a bit quicker across the pond.

 

[mhardy6647]

We are fairly serious tea drinkers and (thanks to our daughter) we do have, and use, a very nice electric kettle to boil water for steeping (black) tea.
It takes just a few minutes indeed. Quite quick, it is, to boil about 1.2 l of water for our venerable, UK-made (nominally) six-cup Chatsford teapot.

I will note, of course, that those are English minutes and not metric ones.

An aside, if I may. When I was in grad school, we had a boiling water bath (for incubation of samples that... well... required boiling) in the lab that my thesis advisor had procured in Japan. It was a small porcelain vessel with an electrical socket on one end. It was, he said, designed to make "hot towels" (compresses), and to do so fast. One plugged it in to heat water to boiling, which it did very quickly. Perhaps one can see where this story is going. We used to use, mostly, distilled water in it, although the rule of thumb was to use tap water if it was heating slowly. One "slow heating" day, I stuck my finger into the water to see how hot it was. It was on that day that I realized how this particular water bath worked, and why it heated tap water so quickly. Yup, it used the mains AC and the conductivity of the water. zzzzzzzzzzzt.

Now, here's the bad part. I actually repeated that gaffe with this water bath on a subsequent occasion. I am nothing if not an empiricist. Fortunately, I have long been in the habit of wearing shoes with (relatively) thick rubber soles, so I am here to tell the tale.

 

[Ricardus]

I boil my tea water in a vintage RevereWare kettle. Takes about 2 mins or less to come to just under a boil. This electric stove in the apartment gets really hot.

 

[Digby]

I'm a heathen and use the microwave to make tea

*sharp intake of breath* take it back, take it back. This is akin to telling Italians you put pineapple on pizza.

 

[fpitas]

*sharp intake of breath* take it back, take it back. This is akin to telling Italians you put pineapple on pizza.

Now, let's not get crazy.