If you've already renovated a kitchen or are just beginning the process, you know how overwhelming the details can be. Our Fittings and Material Spotlights are quick guides to basic kitchen fixtures and materials to familiarize you with terminology, pros and cons, and relevant reader reviews. Today we look at pot filler faucets - a cook's dream or an unnecessary extravagance? You decide.
Faucet Style: Pot Filler
Distinctive Features: A pot filler faucet is a swing-out faucet on a long, jointed arm, mounted over the stove.
Pros: Saves you from lugging a heavy pot of water from the sink to the stove; great for filling pots that don't fit into the sink; faucet arm often folds back against the stove wall when it's not in use.
Cons: You still have to drag the heavy pot of water back to the sink to empty it; can be easy to bump and accidentally turn on the water; no drain to catch leaks; cost can be prohibitive once you factor in additional plumbing; grease from cooking can make the faucet difficult to clean.
Installation: Most pot filler faucets only require a single one-half inch cold water supply line, which a plumber can install in 30 minutes or less. The location of the pipe is critical; if it's not right, the faucet may end up being too low or too high, and may not fit right up against the wall. Make sure to consider the height of your cooktop as well as your tallest pot when determining the location of the faucet. It's also recommended to get a faucet with two valves. (The second valve helps to control and minimize damage should the faucet ever get a leak.)
Price range: Start around $100, plus the cost of installation
Kitchn Reader Reviews:
Hands down my husband's favorite kitchen tool is the pot filler, [although I initially] thought it was silly...you can't walk to the sink? - Annette from this Kitchen Tour
I have one. They're overrated, function-wise, but they look cool and if you choose an inexpensive-er fixture, the additional plumbing run is not a very big item in the overall budget, particularly if you are designing/building from scratch. I think of mine as jewelry for the kitchen, although I do use it often. And as someone pointed out, draining the pot is just as much or more of an issue. In my next kitchen, I am definitely going to do a drain next to or behind the range to address that. - splatgirl
I've always found these baffling. As has been mentioned, you still have to haul the boiling pot to the sink off the stove. But for me, the biggest drawback is that I really cook a lot, and the backsplash by the cooktop gets really grimy and oily. The last thing I need is a hard-to-reach faucet with tons of nooks and crannies back there that I have to clean. 0 debtex
Do you have or want a pot filler faucet? What are your experiences with it?
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(Images: 1. Josh & Maria and by Janey Jessen for The Kitchn; 2. Rebecca Orlov)
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I don't really see the point, but I think they might look interesting above the sink, in place of a regular faucet. Especially if you had a gigantic sink, which I hope to have one day.
By the way, the first image looks amazing - are there any more photos of that kitchen?
If you don't like carrying around pots of water, what might be more useful would be to have a prep sink installed next to the stove with a pot filler faucet between the two. That way you have the convenience of the pot filler faucet with the added benefit of being able to empty the pot without carrying it across the room as well. To me, carrying the heavy pot full of what is very probably close to boiling water is more worrying than carrying a heavy pot full of room temperature or slightly warm water across the kitchen.
We used to have one in our old kitchen when I was growing up. It kinda made sense since: a) we ate a lot of pasta, and b) my mom was injured and couldn't lift the pot of water onto the stove. We (the kids) did the cleanup so there was no issue with dumping the water.
Honestly, it was nice to have then, but if I were designing my dream kitchen, I wouldn't put it in.
It's much more of an issue to carry and dump a pot of possibly very hot water from the stove. For the typical kitchen (no matter how sophisticated) it's a waste, it was meant for industrial sized pots where you're making vast quantities of stock or soup for 50 or more on a regular basis. Chinese restaurant kitchens often have these, but those commercial stove tops are designed with it in mind and are sloped to the wall and have built-in drains. It makes it possible to quickly rinse and clean the wok for the next dish.
I want one. Yes I do. I have it picked out already. Copper. I spoke to someone I know who has one and she loves it.
Indispensable for water bath canning - I LOVE mine.
There was a New York Times article a few years back which interviewed the city's best-known reviewing architect (he's the guy employed by hundreds of co-op boards to judge the technical elements of proposed unit renovations). I just looked up the article to jog my memory, and it said this:
"Mr. Glass sees all of his decisions as based in reason even when not based in building code. Take the current fad for stoves with pot-filler faucets, for example. He is against them. Not just because it seems silly to him that someone could not walk across a kitchen to fill a pot under a sink, but because a water faucet without a drain under it seems like an invitation for water damage."
This may not be as large a concern for those in single-family dwellings, but the pot-filler mainly seems like a stage piece in the Williams-Sonoma lifestyle, where the appearance of being able to cook is vastly more important than actually cooking.