"Phil Addison" wrote in message
...
SWIMBO bought a shiny new steel kettle, and now we can't listen to the
kitchen radio when its on (the kettle that is!!) because it makes such a
vigorous 'kettling' racket, and not just when it's near boiling. Last
weekend I talked to a guy in our independent appliance retailer and he
said they are all like that these days, its due to the trendy new
'concealed element' design.

The concealed element 'feature' is where the element is embedded in the
flat bottom of the kettle, rather than being the conventional 'bent rod'
style immersed in the water. I think the noise is due to the large flat
base acting as a kind of sounding board.

On a quick look it seems as if this style of kettle is all that's
available these days. Has anyone else come across this problem? Any
recommendations for a good quiet cordless kettle?

Don't know about concealed element types, mine has the normal exposed type.
Hard or soft water appears to make some difference.

The water here is hard and the kettle made a tremendous racket from soon
after getting warm until boiling. As you say the radio could not be heard
above it. Then I started using bottled water and that began to dissolve
the scale, though none could be seen on the element itself except around
where the element is fixed to the vessel. I used a proprietory descaler
to remove all the scale.

Now, using the bottled water it doesn't make any noise at all until just off
boiling, but even then its much less than before. I can hear the radio
again. So I think the noise is made much worse by hardness in the water,
making a very thin - invisible micro scale layer on the element, but why
that should be make the noise worse...? Something to do with the breakdown
of the temporary hardness of the water during boiling perhaps.

Roger R