I use my tea kettle almost daily. I like to have a hot drink before I go to bed, and I often use it for hot water for oatmeal, soup, and other instant convenient foods. Or just to bump up a strong cup of coffee. I use it often! But we don't use it so often that it has had an abnormal life. It's a tea kettle for Pete's sake!
Keith bought it for me for Christmas in 2004. He got it at Sams Club and it has a lifetime guarantee. Oddly, they don't sell them anymore. I found the listing on Sams Club though and so I printed it. We no longer have the box nor the receipt. Really, who keeps a receipt for a tea kettle? It's not like it would ever explode or anything!
Keith filled the tea kettle about 3/4 full and we sat in the living room watching tv waiting for the whistle. We heard a little noise; I thought it was the neighbors bumping their trash can as they took it out to the curb. A minute later we were shocked to hear a loud explosion in our kitchen! We both whipped our heads around and saw a cloud of vapor billowing in all directions. We were very confused!
We bolted to the kitchen and found the tea kettle was in pieces all over the place and the entire kitchen was drenched in boiling water. We picked up the pieces and mopped the ceiling and floor, gave the cupboards and counters a wipe-down and were in utter awe about the whole thing. We both took pictures with our phones of the mayhem. It was ridiculous!
The bottom of the tea kettle is triple-ply. The inner ply must have developed a gap allowing water to get in between the layers of the kettle bottom. And that water must have come to a super hot boil and blew the inner ply into the kettle. The lid blew off the kettle and with such force that it broke the very sturdy handle right off and continued to fly up and crashed into the ceiling. The whistling spout lid flew off and came apart flying all over the kitchen as well. The handle flew too. Of course the water must have come out of the kettle in an Old Faithful sort of way. The kettle wasn't on the stove, so the force of the explosion must have sent it into the air for a short flight too.
Had anyone been in the kitchen, they would have been burned very badly. Boiling water was everywhere. We were very fortunate that this accident did not occur in the daytime when the kitchen is a very busy place. If any of the kids had been burned, I wouldn't hesitate for a minute to explode in the same manner. Really, this mama bear would have been a force to be reckoned with. But, as it happened, no one was injured. We were lucky.
Our tea kettle just exploded in the same manner this morning. We got ours at Costco, but it appears to be almost identical to yours. The only difference is the spout cover that I can see. Even the lid is exactly the same.
ReplyDeleteAnyhow, same problem - water in between the plies, big boom, water and pieces everywhere. Our handle stayed on, but the spout and lid were across the kitchen.
Our bottom looks the same too, and there is water sloshing somewhere in there now, even though it appears empty.
We're lucky no one was in the kitchen when it happened.
It's going back to Costco.
Anonymous, and everyone else who finds this blog post after googling for exploding tea kettles - there are a lot of you! - Sams Club refused to take my tea kettle back. They said I had to contact the manufacturer which is Member Mark and then gave me a phone number to call, which was just a maze of voice commands.
ReplyDeleteAlso, please don't be anonymous. At the very least make up a name then I won't wonder if you are a spammer or a bot. Humor me. :)