Why is it that a kettle boils water? Experts suggest that the perfect temperature for a cup of tea should be between 60 and 65 degrees Celsius, any hotter and the leaves become scalded and lose their flavour. Despite this, kettle manufacturers continue to create devices that boil the water to well over a hundred degrees.
If a kettle were to be produced that only heated the water to 65 degrees, we would get better tea, faster and with an energy reduction of around 40%. Surely that makes sense especially with tea consumption being as high as it is in the UK!
Naturally, a kettle of this type would need a dial to allow for hotter water on those rare occasions where the water is needed for something other than tea…
Time for some rough science…
The average Brit drinks around 5 cups of tea per day (according to the UK Tea Council and the total population in the UK is around 61 million people. That means the UK consumes around 366 million cups of tea per day. A quick google indicates to that it costs around �£0.02 to boil a kettle at current market rates. That works out at a national cost of �£732,0000 per day or �£2671,800,000 per year spent on boiling kettles in the UK.
If we reduce this figure by the 40% that would equate to a national saving per year of around Ã?£1068,720,000 and Ã?£14.60 for each person in the country. Naturally, this assumes that everyone makes their own cups of tea, doesn’t drink cold drinks and always consumes the national average number of cups per day (I did say it was rough science!).
That’s more money than I can imagine in my head, a massive saving and a huge improvement on national energy consumption levels.
Whoa… this could possibly be the most boring thing I’ve ever posted on my blog!
This has been a big month for Wifey and me – we have now cleared the last of our debt and are in a position to go and buy tickets for our big travelling adventure.
It’s been a real slog, but we’ve worked hard and made a lot of sacrifices to get into a position where we’re completely free of debt, but somehow we’ve made it and we’re ready to rock.
So, tickets are being booked this month, then we just have to save up our spending money. The plan is to leave late September to mid October so we can be somewhere cool for New Year.
My inner geek is in the process of setting up a travel blog where we hope to post pictures and whatnot from the tour as and when we get a chance. I’ll provide more details closer to the time as there’s not much point shouting about it at the moment.
Warning, long and meandering post ahead – you have been warned!
I had a bit of a strange, but somewhat revealing night tonight. For as long as I can remember I’ve been a shy person who won’t ever go out in public unless I have someone to tag along with. Call it a lack of social confidence if you like, but whatever it is – I’ve never been one for being ‘out’ on my own.
Yet tonight something strange happened, Wifey went out on one of her Ghost hunts tonight and I found myself stuck in on my own again. Normally I would have spent the night in, watching DVD’s and playing on my Xbox 360, with the most sociable part of the night being me hurling abuse while handing out the pwnage in COD4. Yet tonight I didn’t do that – I went out, in public on my own.
I started the night at the local cinema – I’d been wanting to watch Transformers 2, since I heard it was being made, and knowing the wife hates sci-fi and action films, decided to make the most of my time alone and squeeze that one in. As the film ended, it occurred to me that the night was still relatively young and I hadn’t yet seen the new Star Trek movie, so I took a piss, grabbed some more munchies and rolled in to the next showing (obviously, not all at the same time!).
By time Star Trek had finished and I’d got home I didn’t feel like I was ready to call it a night, so I headed up to my local and had a couple of drinks. I got to the pub just as a the band Drunk Lovers, Sinners & Saints were finishing up a covers set. I only heard a couple of tracks but they were pretty damn good. Having now been on their Myspace page (link above) and listened to their original music, I have to say – I’m a fan! I really like Paramore and their music definitely reminds me of them.
Anyway this is the first time I know of that I’ve ever been to a pub on my own, without someone for support. I was expecting to feel really self concious but I didn’t feel like that at all. I’m trying to work out what has changed in me recently that would cause that sudden increase in confidence. The only thing I can think of is that I’m now older and wiser and don’t give quite such a rats ass what people think of me any more.
So, I’ve had my blog up on bomb.org.uk for about five years now and fancy a new name and brand. Previously, I’ve blogged on greendezire.com and andyspad.net.
Unfortunately, I let both of the original domains go and they’re now being squatted on, so using them is out of the question.
Any ideas for a new domain I could use? I’m having a bit of trouble coming up with one on my own!
