Kitchen faucet with faucet for drinking water

The water entering the city apartments is in most cases far from ideal and unsuitable for drinking or cooking. There are two ways to solve this problem: purchase of drinking water from special suppliers or purification of tap water on site. Recently, apartment owners increasingly prefer the second method, installing a variety of cleaning systems in the apartments. Kitchen faucet with water filter allows you to organically fit them into the overall interior of the kitchen.

Advantages and disadvantages of combination faucets

In most cases drinking water treatment systems placed in a niche under the sink. This allows you to provide free access, necessary for the periodic replacement of cartridges, and hide the filter unit itself. Usually, in this case, a separate mixer is installed on the sink, connected to a water filter. This is not always the best solution:

• The second kitchen faucet is very rarely obtained organically fit into the overall interior of the sink. Often he looks there as a kind of foreign body.
• To install it, you need to make an additional hole in the countertop, which is not always possible.
• A drinking water mixer connected to the filter takes up part of the washing workspace, which leads to various inconveniences when using it.

These inconveniences can be completely avoided if you choose for the kitchen a combined faucet with a tap for drinking water. This plumbing device has such a design that the filtered stream is supplied through the same spout as untreated water, but through an independent channel.

Thus, the advantages of this type of plumbing include:

• Save space in the kitchen. With the modest dimensions of the kitchen, this factor plays an important role.
• Easy to install. After installing the cleaning system, you don’t need to drill anything: one mixer simply changes to another.
• Original and beautiful design. Many models of kitchen faucets with a faucet for drinking water are made in high-tech style, but you can pick up classic options.

Naturally, no product can be perfect. And combined faucets have their drawbacks:

• They have a more complex design and a greater number of different moving elements, which could not but lead to some loss to the classic models in reliability.
• The main drawback that restrains the demand for combined models is their high cost. Not everyone is ready to lay out more than 6 thousand rubles for a combined kitchen faucet with a filter.

Types of combination faucets

Like classic models, combined are divided into two types according to design:

• Lever To supply drinking water, an additional lever is provided in them, which can be located on the front or side surface of the tap.
• Valve This option is less convenient - access to the tap in the front part will be difficult if you need to fill a large tank with clean water.

The spout of the combination mixer may have one or two openings for supplying water.

The material used in the production of these products may be different: you can find faucets made of bronze, stainless steel, brass, plastic or ceramic. This diversity has led to a huge selection of many combinations. The deposition of non-ferrous metals, such as chromium or nickel, allows manufacturers to produce mixers of different styles and even use the effect of artificial aging.

From a hygienic point of view, nickel-plated or chrome-plated units are preferable, since they do not allow dirt to accumulate on the surface. Yes, and such plumbing devices always look beautiful and fresh.

Selection rules

The convenience of using a sink in the kitchen will largely depend on how well the combination faucet was chosen. What should you pay special attention to here?

• Product quality. The combination faucet is a rather complex mechanism, so you need to check how well its parts fit together, if there are any visible damage.

• Convenience. The location of the controls should not cause difficulties when using the device. Right in the store you can present your sink and evaluate whether it will be convenient to use the valves or levers of a particular model.
• Swivel mixers are the most convenient to operate. They are the only option if the kitchen uses more than one sink.
• The height of the spout directly depends on the depth of the sink. The smaller it is, the higher the mixer spout should have. Otherwise, it will be simply impossible to draw water into tall dishes.
• As always, when choosing, it is better to give preference to well-known companies whose product quality is beyond doubt.

Installation

Installing a combination mixer is unlikely to cause special problems, even if you perform it yourself, having a minimum of repair skills:

• The water supply is shut off to the sink. In most apartments, stopcocks are located in the toilet. After that, to let the residues drain, just open the faucet in the kitchen.
• The old crane is dismantled. Old hoses attached to it can simply be cut off, after which they can be easily disconnected from the pipes. The lock nut is unscrewed, and then the old mixer with hose scraps is removed from above.

• The mounting space for the new assembly is cleaned and degreased. After prolonged use, the surface around the hole in the countertop under the old faucet can have a very unsightly appearance.
• A combined faucet is installed and connected with the rubber hoses that come with the plumbing and a cleaning system.

Tighten the hoses carefully: excessive tightening can lead to damage to the seal, and insufficient tightening to leaking or knocking out nipples. In addition, it is important not to confuse which channel the treated water will be supplied to, and which must be connected to the water supply.

Products of European companies: Czech ZorgSanitary, German Kaiser and Blanko, have gained worldwide fame and a good reputation in the market of combination faucets. Their products are of excellent quality, durability and beauty. True, these characteristics are combined with considerable cost. So when choosing a combination mixer, you don’t need to rush: it’s important to think through everything and evaluate it, read reviews, and only then go to the hardware store.