Water Delivered Just the Way You Want It

When you plan your kitchen renovation, remember to think about water. While water filtration and water heating won’t create ooohs and ahhhhs like granite countertops or whimsical backsplashes, you use kitchen water multiple times a day. Why not make it safe, environmentally-friendly, and convenient?

Drink 8 Glasses of Your Own Water a Day
A water filtration system is a really nice addition to any remodeled kitchen. It ensures your water is safe for drinking and it’s environmentally-friendly because it eliminates the need to buy bottled water.

If you are concerned about parasites, chemicals, prescription medicine residue, chlorine taste, and lead from pipes, water filtration purifies your water before you drink it. Incorporate a new water filtration system throughout the house, install one under the sink, or buy one that attaches to the faucet. Many refrigerators also come with a water filtration system. With any system, make sure you follow the directions to keep it clean and change the filters according to the manufacturer’s recommendations.

Are You Tired of the Wait and Waste?
How long do you run the tap until hot water emerges? Homeowners are increasingly adding on-demand hot and cold water to their kitchen remodeling plans.

The most versatile models dispense both hot and cold water through one faucet (which can be separate from the regular sink faucet), eliminating the need for more than one mounting hole in the sink. The cold water is produced by a chiller while the hot is generated by a heater; both are usually under the sink.

Kitchen-specific hot water heaters are gaining in popularity, allowing homeowners to speed up any number of kitchen tasks: preparing hot drinks, soups, and sauces; thawing frozen items; heating water for cooking; and warming baby bottles. Using an insulated tank under the sink, hot water dispensers in the kitchen keep a small amount of water at a temperature close to boiling. Most units allow the homeowner to set the temperature. Another advantage is that you don’t need to wait while the water heats up, which can save you hundreds of gallons of water a year.

The units work very simply. When a user presses the handle, the hot water flows out and is replaced by cold water (which is then heated in turn). Tanks vary in size as does the wattage of the heating elements. Most tanks are 1/3 or 1/2 gallon and can be between 500 and 1,300 watts. A 750-watt unit can produce up to 60 cups of water per hour, but larger units can generate up to 100 cups per hour.

Most systems are attached to the plumbing system and use an insulated under-sink tank that is fixed to the wall. They refill automatically through the pipes. However, if you only need smaller quantities of hot water, you can obtain portable models which are inexpensive and simple to install. These smaller water tanks require manual refills and take a few minutes for the water to heat up.