Smart technologies are already widely used in our daily lives, and kitchen design isn’t an exception. Touchless faucets are drastically gaining popularity and are widely applied in private homes. When planning a kitchen design, the majority find smart faucets as stylish solutions.
Being a convenient addition to your kitchen, automatic faucets are user-friendly, hygienic, and water and energy-efficient tools. Due to the built-in sensors, the majority of us like a touchless kitchen faucet because this appliance enables us to avoid odd movements when we need to turn on the water while cooking. So, it also saves time since there’s no need to touch the faucet handle.
Main Concerns You Should Resolve Before Smart Faucet Installation
Despite its attractiveness, consumers give an eye to faucet maintenance, battery capacity, and the peculiarities of its installation. Battery-powered faucets are the most common models, also some appliances are connected to house electricity networks.
As manufacturers claim, no professional plumber or electrician is needed to install it, or recharge the battery on your own. Speaking about battery lifetime, most touchless faucets are equipped with lithium batteries which vouch for even and stable power release.
Although, the operating capacity depends on the frequency of faucet usage (on average you can use one battery during 2-3 years without worrying about its early run), the quality of the faucet, and the battery type. There’re also alkaline batteries, but their lifetime is quite short: several months to one year.
What Pros and Cons Touchless Kitchen Faucets Have?
Why do more and more people prefer touchless faucets to install in their apartments?
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Preserving hygiene at a high level by omitting to touch a handle that is a ground for bacteria to spread.
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Regulating water flow with the help of a built-in flow restrictor that controls water amount for each activation.
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Saving energy to heat the water.
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Providing comfort, meaning if you have dirty hands during the cooking, you can access water easily.
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A wide variety of designs makes it a perfect fit for any kitchen.
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Possibility to reduce water temperature that prevents accidental hot water flow.
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Long battery run that can last up to 5 years.
However, despite the positive features this appliance has, smart faucets have drawbacks that should be also considered:
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High price compared to traditional faucets.
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Complexity in installation and maintenance of touch and motion sensors that requires professional’s help.
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Operating dependency on batteries to ensure regular power source.
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There’s no precise control over water flow and temperature modes.
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Limited functionality means you won’t get some features that are available in faucets with manual mode.
Conclusion
Thus, is it worth purchasing a touchless faucet? Such a purchase can be reasonable if you will use it as an additional convenience layer, but not just like a major one. By using a smart faucet constantly, you can stay unsatisfied with the lack of features, mainly because of the absence of control and the ability to change the modes. Also, another pitfall connected to the sensor types is that some contactless faucets detect both hand movements and utensils. While others have just hand-moving sensors.