Bodum Isis 5500-1
Bodum Isis 5500-1 Of Questionable OriginWhile perusing Craigslist Detroit Danielle came across a “garage sale” of questionable origin. That is, a supposed garage sale taking place in one of the hangers of a private FBO located at Troy airport. (More info and photo of inside the hanger.) We swung by there this afternoon and while most of the things available were open box / missing item RTA furniture, there were a few interesting things. The only one we found worth purchasing was the Bodum electric kettle seen above. It was US$20, marked Salvage (on a yellow item number sticker on the top), but seemed to be unused. The kettle itself was in great shape, the box was just a bit beat up.
Usually when I heat water for tea or whatnot I use a metal kettle on the stove. This works, but it’s both a bit slow and inefficient. I’ve been wanting an electric kettle, but there only seem to be two varities available: cheap white plastic, non-detachable cord, and a top which can’t be opened much, if at all (<US$20) or expensive (>$50), stainless steel and plastic, and not much better made than the cheap ones.
This one is of the same heating element design, except the top opens up all the way to allow for easy cleaning, it was cheap, seems to have been unused, and almost all of the energy spent is actually put into the water. In the initial test it heated six cups of water to boiling in around three minutes. Not bad at all.
I think tonight I’ll make some valerian root tea to celebrate, and also help take off the edge which the multiple cups of coffee throughout the afternoon have put on me. Whoops.
You spent $20 on a second hand kettle? Wow… over here ASDA (err Wal-Mart I guess) sell bog standard white cordless ones for £5 ($10?).
We also have metal ones with elements in, plastic ones that are totally transparent, and ones with LEDs in. The latest in kettle technology is wasting electricity by keeping your water just below boiling point so there’s no need to wait one whole minute to begin making a cup of tea.
On behalf of the whole of Britain I wish to congratulate you on not using your microwave to make cups of tea ;-)
Modify your kettle to use three-phase power to provide quicker boiling times. :)
Hmm, all this talk of tea is reminding me I’ve not had anything to eat yet.
It actually wasn’t used, just returned to the store. There were no water marks at all inside the whole thing…
Microwave isn’t as efficient as well, I just used a metal kettle on the gas burner on the stove (hob?) before. This is just better.
Did your metal kettle whistle? It’s something I wish electric kettles did.
Yep, it did… There’s a picture of it here. The problem was that it was hard to clean, and I really didn’t like the noise of the whistle. It really, really, really bothered me. With this one I can just know that once it’s off (after making a not too loud THUNK sound) the water is boiling.
The old one also had a small hole on the top, and the shiny outside made cleaning little bits of stove oil off difficult. On the upside it did only cost $18 or so.
My parents have a whistling electric kettle, but it’s small, traditional tea kettle shaped, and the only opening to it is about 1.5″ across. You can’t actually get inside of it to clean it… That’s typical of cheaper kettles here in the states. It’s like this. The one I was looking at before is this one, as it’s the only decent quality one I could get locally. (I’m hesitant to buy things like this sight unseen, as often the quality is crap.