[0:00] Hello.
[0:00] It is still November.
[0:02] The heat just kicked on, but I don't care.
[0:04] And today, I'm going to make 
my car charging station boil water very quickly.
[0:09] And I'm going to do it using this British kettle
which I have made work with a car charging station
[0:14] using this very cursed adapter 
I built using very cursed parts.
[0:20] Now, before I hear any complaints 
about the effort that got put into this one,
[0:24] this video is basically a repeat of that time 
I made a shop heater with a J1772 connector,  
[0:30] allowing me to use my car charging station as a 
nice and convenient power cable
[0:34] that delivers 240 volts AC (which in case you didn't know, is all 
a level two charging station actually does).
[0:42] But this time I put that connector onto an electrical 
box and on the other side of it...
[0:49] is this horrible thing.
[0:51] But more on that later.
[0:53] You might wonder why I've done this.
[0:55] Well, you see, I have a few British friends who have all expressed frustration at how slow electric kettles are here in the US.
[1:03] Because of our 120 volt household power and the desire to maintain compatibility with smaller 15 amp circuits,
[1:10] most ordinary appliances are limited to 1,500W of power,
[1:15] and kettles are no exception.
[1:17] Put that much power into a liter of room temperature water, and it will take about 4 minutes for that water to boil.
[1:24] Now, personally, I think that's plenty fast
[1:28] but because the Brits have 13 amps of 
230 volt power at every receptacle,
[1:34] they can shove three whole 
kilowatts of power into their water boily things.
[1:40] And because they can, they do.
[1:43] And today, they're so used to this
[1:45] that the absurdity of a plastic countertop appliance sucking down more power than my home's central air conditioner
[1:51] just doesn't quite register.
[1:53] Fun fact, the BBC used to have to share when breaks in their programming would happen with the National Grid
[1:59] because half a million people getting up 
to put the kettle on all at the same time
[2:03] meant there was suddenly a large nuclear 
reactor's worth of power draw to be dealt with.
[2:08] For making tea.
[2:10] And other hot beverages, probably.
[2:12] Ooh, maybe even porridge.
[2:14] Uh, anyway, after I made that video on 
the shop heater powered by my charging station,
[2:19] a certain slow-mo guy named Gav suggested 
I make a kettle that works with a car charger.
[2:26] That sounded delightfully up my alley,
[2:28] so I promised I would make that happen.
[2:31] And here we go!
[2:32] First, I would need to get my hands on a kettle designed to work with the 240 volt electricity my car charging station puts out.
[2:40] So, I imported this British kettle, 
which draws the customary 3,000 watts from the wall.
[2:47] Next, I would need a way 
to power this kettle from my charging station.
[2:52] Now, I could have done the sensible thing,
[2:54] which would be to build an adapter 
like this with a NEMA 6-20 receptacle
[2:59] and then cut the end off of this cord 
and connect it up to a NEMA 6-20 plug.
[3:05] But a while ago, someone on the internet 
made me aware that Leviton sells this thing.
[3:11] Yes, this is a real product you can buy for some reason.
[3:16] The Leviton BSRDP-W is a single BS1363 receptacle 
designed to fit into a North American junction box.
[3:27] Why on Earth do they sell this?
[3:29] I have no idea!
[3:30] There's no way this would be 
to code anywhere you might install it.
[3:34] [sudden muzak]
[3:36] Okay, so this instruction sheet made me dig a little deeper
[3:40] and it would seem that Saudi Arabia's current 
SASO standards call for type G plugs and sockets
[3:47] (that's the British one).
[3:48] But it seems that in the past they and/or perhaps other Gulf countries were following NEMA standards for junction boxes, etc.
[3:58] This device meets SASO standards
[4:01] and that little symbol above the 0007 is the 
Gulf Conformity Mark of the Gulf Cooperation Council
[4:07] and so I think it is intended 
for use in retrofit situations in those countries.
[4:13] So it's got a real use case... but certainly not here.
[4:19] Because we use split-phase power over here, 
nothing you might plug into this will be correctly wired.
[4:26] It will function just fine - no electrical load knows the difference
[4:29] - but these two pins will both be live at 120 volts potential to ground, which means depending on how a device was wired,
[4:37] it may always be energized, even if switched off.
[4:41] Which might be shocking.
[4:43] Now, Leviton was smart enough to make sure this switch 
is a double pole switch that isolates both pins.  
[4:49] But still, this is all kinds of weird!
[4:53] And yet it exists.
[4:55] So, I threw together this adapter, which simply has 
the line one, line two, and ground pins of the J1772 connector
[5:04] wired directly to the cursed receptacle on the other side.
[5:09] Am I showing you what's inside of here?
[5:11] No!
[5:12] And to make the charging station think it's 
plugged into a car which is requesting power,
[5:17] the control pilot pin is connected to the ground 
pin through an 882ish ohm resistor and a diode.
[5:25] Now plugging this into my 
charging station causes it to go [clack]
[5:29] and energize this receptacle 
with the correct voltage but in the wrong way.
[5:35] It will work, though.
[5:36] So let's do a little test.
[5:38] Here's an American kettle plugged into the wall 
and bringing this much water to a boil.
[5:44] This is almost exactly one liter, but not quite.
[5:47] The important thing is 
I'm using the exact same amount of water with every test.
[5:52] The water was 63.7° F or 17.6 C.
[5:56] And with the kettle pulling about 1,460 watts, it took 4 minutes and 5 seconds to hit my subjective definition of boiling.
[6:05] And for a slightly less subjective definition, 
the kettle switched itself off at 4 minutes 17 seconds.
[6:12] But I had a second American kettle to test.
[6:15] This cheaper model has an exposed heating element.
[6:18] And since it becomes completely submerged when filled with water,
[6:22] there are absolutely no heat losses to the air below the kettle.
[6:28] That doesn't matter very much, 
but you'll see why I also tested this one later.
[6:33] This one was filled with water at 63.1° F or 17.3 C.
[6:39] And after a failed start because it 
wasn't seated properly, it drew 1,420 watts from the wall
[6:46] and required 4 minutes and 15 seconds 
to hit my subjective definition of boiling.
[6:51] And it switched itself off at the 4 minute 35 seconds mark.
[6:55] So, both of these kettles require 
about 4 minutes of time to boil about a liter of water.
[7:02] And now it's time to see 
how much faster a right proper kettle is.
[7:06] This time the water was at 61.8° F or 16.6 C.
[7:12] And I want you to notice something here.
[7:14] This is just under 1 liter of water.
[7:17] And when I placed it in this kettle, 
the water line went up to about the 4.5 mark.
[7:24] That doesn't make any sense.
[7:25] So this is 4.5... what exactly?
[7:29] Oh, I found the answer.
[7:31] And having found it, I simply cannot resist pointing out
[7:34] that every kettle I have ever used 
here in the US tells you its capacity in liters.
[7:40] Yet, this British kettle has markings for,
 and I swear I'm not making this up,
[7:46] breakfast cups.
[7:48] Not an ordinary British cup, 
which is six imperial fluid ounces,
[7:52] but a British breakfast cup, 
which is eight imperial fluid ounces or 7.69 US fluid ounces -
[7:59] That's right, our ounces, pints, and gallons 
aren't the same, in case you didn't know,
[8:03] or 227 milliliters.
[8:06] So, the next time any of you out there who speak metric get annoyed that I forgot to include a conversion for you,
[8:12] I want you to remember this little adventure 
where we all learned what the [bleep] a breakfast cup is.
[8:19] Now, in fairness, I can't be too annoyed about 
this thing using a weird non-standard cup
[8:26] because for us Yanks, 
although 8 ounces defines our standard cup,
[8:31] a cup of coffee is only 6 ounces.
[8:35] If you've ever wondered why your coffee pot 
has smaller than a cup cups, that's why.
[8:40] So, we've also got our fair share of strange customary units 
for hot beverage purposes hanging around.
[8:47] And I suppose it's a fun coincidence that we've got 8 oz standard cups and 6 oz coffee cups
[8:53] while the Brits have 
6 oz standard cups and 8 oz... breakfast cups.
[8:59] Actually, it's only through figuring out what this unit is on this kettle that I learned British cups are 6 ounces.
[9:07] What's going on there? You have 20 cups in an imperial gallon?
[9:12] At least our customary 
units consistently work in powers of two.
[9:16] ...until you get down to the teaspoon -
[9:19] Anyway, enough about strange units.
[9:21] How long does it take this British kettle to boil that water?
[9:25] Well, we have twice as much power 
going into this thing, so if the maths work out,
[9:30] it should only take about 2 minutes.
[9:32] And whaddya know!
[9:33] It took 1 minute 55 seconds 
to hit my subjective definition of boiling.
[9:38] And it switched itself off at the 2 minute 10 second mark.
[9:42] That sure is quite a lot faster 
than what the other two can manage.
[9:46] And I suppose if you're a big tea drinking culture, it would be nice to shave a couple of minutes off the boiling time.
[9:53] But I still think it's kind of bonkers that shoving 3 kilowatts into a cheap plastic kettle is just a normal thing over there.
[10:03] But then I thought...
[10:04] what if we shoved 6kW into a cheap plastic kettle?
[10:09] Because you see, if I were to 
hook up an American kettle to 240 volt power,
[10:14] Ohm's law would dictate that it will consume twice as much current than it will from a 120 volt supply.
[10:20] And by also having twice as much voltage,
[10:23] that means its power draw will 
quadruple from 1,500 watts to 6,000 watts.
[10:31] And that's why I made this other adapter.
[10:34] This is a NEMA 6-20,
[10:36] one of the various 240 volt receptacles 
we have here, but which are rarely ever seen.
[10:42] And with a matching plug and a little bit of choppy choppy, 
I can send 240 volts through these cheap kettles.  
[10:49] And my charging station can supply up to 7.5 kW.
[10:52] So, it should have no trouble at all 
dealing with the 6 kW kettle I'm about to make.
[10:58] Now, obviously, don't do this at home for lots of reasons.
[11:03] One, I will be overloading the NEMA 6-20 slightly.
[11:07] The kettle's gonna draw about 24 amps 
when the receptacle and plug are only rated for 20.
[11:13] But even worse, the wires going to the kettle 
are going to be overloaded by quite a good deal.
[11:18] This is only 16 gauge wire, which should 
only really have 13 amps pushed through it,
[11:23] but we're doing 24.
[11:26] Now, honestly, the kettle 
should only run for about 1 minute before the water boils.
[11:31] So, I won't be overloading it for long at all, and I doubt any of the electrical connections are going to get very warm.
[11:37] But, I'll be shoving a stupid amount of power through a very small heating element inside a plastic kettle.
[11:43] So, you know, stuff might go wrong.
[11:46] Only one way to find out, though!
[11:49] I had a fire extinguisher at the ready
[11:51] and filled this kettle with my standard 
not-quite-liter at 65 Fahrenheit, 18.3 C.
[11:58] The power switch did not latch correctly, so the start 
wasn't perfect, but even still,
[12:04] this thing got the water boiling in just 55 seconds.
[12:08] Not such a slow kettle anymore, huh?
[12:11] You'll notice the water is boiling quite violently.
[12:14] I'm not sure it would be safe 
to actually fill this thing up all the way.
[12:18] But boy is it quick!
[12:21] And sure enough, it was powered for such a brief period of time that the power cord had barely warmed up at all to the touch.
[12:29] Now, I decided to do this again 
with a cleaner start and with colder water.
[12:33] This time, the water was 60.8 F, which is exactly 16 C.
[12:39] And well, if the colder water 
made a difference, it wasn't enough to tell.
[12:43] Because again, it was violently boiling by the 55 second mark,
and the kettle switched itself off about 7 seconds later.
[12:51] So, we learned a few things.
[12:53] One, this does indeed work to make a stupidly fast kettle.
[12:57] Two, it's probably not safe 
to fill this up with any more than a liter of water,
[13:01] or else it'll probably throw boiling water out of itself.
[13:04] And three, it survived long enough to do the test twice.
[13:08] But then I noticed something.
[13:10] Long after it had switched off,
[13:12] this steady stream of bubbles was coming up from where the heating element is bonded to its little support bracket.
[13:19] These bubbles kept going for several minutes, 
but there were no signs of an external leak.
[13:25] I thought it might be possible 
that a pinhole leak in the heating element had formed.
[13:31] See, everywhere else on the heating element 
is completely submerged in water,
[13:35] which will do a great job taking heat energy away from it.
[13:39] But that little connection point there might have stayed dry enough for the heating element to melt a small hole in itself.
[13:47] And those bubbles might be the result of air 
inside the heating element being displaced with water.
[13:54] And if that is a leak, it would be very dangerous to use again.
[13:58] I decided to let this sit overnight full of 
water so I could investigate this later.
[14:03] For now, I had another kettle to test.
[14:06] This one has its heating element bonded to the bottom of its stainless steel interior, which is a very common design.
[14:13] It can apparently handle 3 kW without an issue.
[14:17] But what about six?
[14:20] Well, again, only one way to find out!
[14:24] This kettle also only needed 
about 55 seconds to get the water boiling,
[14:29] but the water inside was boiling 
much more violently than the last kettle.
[14:33] You can quite clearly see the steam which activates the auto stop feature flying out near the power switch.
[14:40] Uh yeah, in case you didn't know,
[14:42] there's a bimetallic disc down here 
which will snap and shut the power off once it gets hot.
[14:47] And it's this tube here at the top which will direct steam down to that disc once the water is actually boiling
[14:53] that makes the disc snap and shuts off the kettle.
[14:57] Steve Mould taught me that.
[14:59] I picked the kettle up after it shut off and felt the bottom of it.
[15:03] To my surprise, it wasn't really warm at all.
[15:06] The electrical contacts were quite hot,
[15:10] but it didn't seem like the plastics 
had gotten any more than slightly warm.
[15:15] Water is really good at absorbing heat energy,
[15:18] but I figured the embedded heating element would direct at least some of its heat downward at the base.
[15:25] If it did, it was hardly noticeable.
[15:28] But that's where the good news ends.
[15:30] I tried to do this again and discovered it ain't working no more.
[15:35] The neon indicator in the switch was still lighting up,
[15:39] but no more boily boily.
[15:41] So, this was a very fast kettle...
[15:44] once.
[15:46] Which is honestly what I expected.
[15:48] I figured these things would have some sort of thermal fuse which will blow if it gets too hot.
[15:53] Like for instance, if you switched it on without any water in it.
[15:57] And since this one only has the water 
on one side of the heating element,
[16:01] it stands to reason that 
6,000 watts of power simply got the fuse too hot.
[16:07] But I wanted to know why exactly it failed.
[16:10] And with the other kettle's mysterious bubbling, 
there were now two things to investigate.
[16:16] First, if this kettle has a thermal fuse, 
it's integral to the heating element.
[16:21] I don't see any sort of separate component.
[16:23] And when I checked the heating element with an ohm meter,
[16:26] it shows either open circuit or quite a few megaohms.
[16:30] However, it blew, it blew.
[16:32] The water simply couldn't pull the heat away 
quite as fast as it needed to, and this burnt itself out.
[16:38] But nothing down here seems like it got very hot.
[16:41] All the plastic looks undamaged, 
and I sure didn't smell anything during the test.
[16:47] That doesn't really matter as it's still broken,
but honestly, I expected a little more carnage.
[16:53] And now to see if this heating element 
was actually filling up with water.
[16:57] I removed it from the kettle and then used a 
Dremel tool to cut a slice through the heating element.
[17:03] I found absolutely no signs of moisture.
[17:05] And I even heated it up with a 
torch to see if any steam might come out.
[17:10] So I was apparently chasing a phantom there.
[17:12] That was probably just a nucleation site of some sort.
[17:16] However, cutting into this revealed that 
the magnesium oxide which fills the tube
[17:21] and maintains an insulating gap between the electrically conductive nichrome wire in the center and the steel sides of the tube,
[17:29] appears to have fused together.
[17:32] The last one of these that I cut through had the magnesium oxide escaping like sand, but here it's now all quite solid.
[17:40] I couldn't bend this any more than you see here because the tube seems to be filled with solid rock now.
[17:47] And honestly, that makes sense.
[17:50] The actual heat was coming from that 
nichrome wire in the center of this tubing.
[17:56] So, while the water could do a great job 
keeping the exterior of the tube relatively cool,
[18:02] the inside of the tube was getting stupid hot.
[18:06] Just for comparison's sake, 
the 7.5 kilowatt shop heater which started this project
[18:11] spreads those kilowatts between six heating element sections.
[18:15] This little coil here is about as long as just one of those,
[18:20] but it was producing nearly as much 
heat as the entire heater does.
[18:24] If we could have seen the insides of the tube while it was on,
[18:28] I'm sure it would have been glowing quite brightly, and I doubt this would have lasted more than a few more cycles.
[18:35] I was tempted to get another one of 
these kettles to see how long it might last,
[18:40] but that would have been effort 
and I already feel bad enough for murdering two of them.
[18:46] So, what have we learned today?
[18:48] Well, British kettles are indeed quite fast,
[18:52] but hook an American kettle up to 240 volts and it's way faster.
[18:58] Once.
[18:59] We also learned what a breakfast cup is.
[19:02] And we learned that Leviton makes this thing for some reason.
[19:07] Now if you live in North America 
and actually wanted to have a 3 kW kettle,
[19:12] one way you could do that is to ask an electrician to install one of these NEMA 6-20 receptacles in your kitchen.
[19:20] That's a bit easier said than done 
due to the requirement for GFCI protection in kitchens
[19:25] and the need for two free slots in your breaker panel,
[19:28] but with the appropriate breakers, 
it can be done safely and to code.
[19:34] That will allow you to use 
240 volt appliances with a relatively normal receptacle
[19:39] and not one of our various terrifying monster plugs.
[19:43] The next part though becomes some 
flavor of sketchy no matter what.
[19:47] I cannot find any 240 volt kettles for sale here,
[19:52] which means you'll have to do 
what I did and import a British or European one,
[19:56] then chop off its plug and wire it to one of these.
[20:01] And the trouble there is again our split-phase power.
[20:05] Any kettle you might import will work just fine,
[20:09] but the neutral wires inside of it 
will not actually be wired to neutral any longer.
[20:15] They will be live at 120 volts to ground.
[20:18] Whether that actually creates a safety hazard 
depends on a whole bunch of factors.
[20:24] And to be honest, since not all plug standards in Europe are actually polarized, I feel like most designs out there would be fine.
[20:32] But you will be committed to using an imported,
modified appliance that you stuck a different plug on.
[20:39] And insurance companies may not like that so much.
[20:42] So keep that in mind.
[20:44] If however you've got one of them fancy induction stoves,
[20:48] then any ordinary stovetop kettle
(that's compatible with induction cooktops of course)
[20:54] can be just as fast as this British kettle.
[20:58] In fact, possibly faster depending on your stove.
[21:02] I am talking proper stoves, though.
[21:04] Those plug-in induction hot plates are limited to the same power as a plug-in kettle, so don't expect those to save you any time.
[21:12] If you've got a built-in cooktop or range with induction burners, though, a stovetop kettle should be wicked fast.
[21:20] And you get the benefit of a whistle!
[21:22] What's not to like?
[21:24] Actually, while I know it's not really saving me any time,
[21:27] I have switched to a stovetop kettle
 which I use with an induction hot plate.
[21:32] I have a conventional radiant stove, 
which honestly I enjoy using more than my induction plate
[21:38] mainly because it has real knobs 
that are actually infinitely adjustable.
[21:43] But when I'm bringing water to a boil, 
the induction plate is significantly faster.
[21:49] So, since I keep that thing 
next to my stove for making pasta or whatever,
[21:54] rather than take up 
even more counter space with a plug-in kettle,
[21:58] I just leave one of these things on there.
[22:01] But now, if I need to boil 
eight breakfast cups of water even faster,
[22:07] I'll just head out to the garage.
[22:10] ♫ anglo-saxophonically smooth jaxx ♫
[22:14] Why am I doing this?
[22:16] ...because of our 120 volt household voltage 
[bong from phone]
[22:22] oops
[22:23] ...could have done the sensible thing which would be to build an adapter like this with a NEMA 6-20 receptacle
[22:29] and then cut the end off of this caaard
[22:32] coorrrd coorrd.
[22:35] Welp.
[22:36] We're having a hard time with this line today.
[22:39] First, if this kettle has a thermal fuse...
[22:43] I'm trying to pry it open.
[22:44] [laughs]
[22:46] Oh, I screwed it back together. I forgot I did that.
[22:54] Did I not - ugh
[22:56] That means I have to 
take it apart again to film the
[23:00] I will never let go of this "breakfast cup" thing.
[23:04] Just had to invent and standardize a whole unit based on "a cup for drinking tea or coffee while eating breakfast," huh?
[23:08] And you actually put that on your kettles!
[23:11] Never again are Brits allowed to suggest 
American units are uniquely arbitrary and weird.
[23:14] Now go eat a crumpet.