Lissa- I just had a Franke Little Butler installed three days ago and I can't tell you how much we love it. The reason I chose it was that I wanted both the hot and cold water to be filtered, and at the time I was looking, Franke was the only company that did this that I found. (I bought the unit last year, yes it has taken THAT LONG to get to where we were ready to install it). The Insta-hot brand filtered the cold but not the hot water. Anyway, the unit is not that big-- the heater is a rectangular cube about 11x7 inches. The filter (it is a Franke triflow filtration unit) is a cylinder about 11 inches high by 2 inches in diameter. However, I don't have a separate cooling unit for the cold water, since the temp coming out of the cold tap is good enuf for me. Also, my fridge has filtered cold water for those times when it matters to me. But the Little Butler filter, heater, and my garburetor fit very comfortably in the sink cab, which is 36" wide. As for cost, when I was looking these units were quite high, but I bought mine from an ebay storefront with 100% positive feedback for about half the price I was quoted in the snazzy plumbing showroom (can't remember numbers now, it's been so long). Hope this info is of use, good luck!

"......does it make any sense to ALSO have a dedicated filtered cold water tap at my bar/coffee station sink?" If your tap water tastes like mine, it certainly does! Believe you're talking about two issues 1) scale/deposition and 2) taste. Scale/deposition can be handled via water softening. Taste can be handled via filtering -- typically via activated charcoal stack. Taste is a very individual thing. How far you should go is up to you. In my case, local city water is 7-10 grains hard; about 200ppm TDS; and tastes distinctly alkaline, which is a region-wide characteristic. It leaves scale on heating elements and bad tastes in coffee, tea, rice, pasta,.... just about everything. I have a softener delivering zero grains to everything. Also have RO unit with sink spigot delivering water at 2ppm TDS which is also piped to the ref. ice-maker. Anything consumable in my household that is prepared using water gets it from the RO spigot. Many people do not like the taste of soft water or RO water and have their personal favorites among the bottled waters. In any event, you should start out by knowing what's in your water now. Have you had it tested? Interestingly, although you talked about filtration and all your various concerns, you said nothing at all about whether or not your water tastes good/bad/neutral. Nor did you say whether or not you've had trouble with it previously.

Hi! Can anyone recommend an undercounter water filter that can be split between a Rohl's tri-flow faucet and an icemaker? Our water test was essentially fine but the taste at the new house isn't as good as other tap water I'm used to so we think filtering out some of the chlorine might help. The GE one my husband liked is on backorder. Another GE filter available at the home depot got bad reviews. We were considering the Watts Premier 53115 and liked that it had 3 stages of filtration but it said something about filtering out Fluoride. We have young kids and want the added fluoride. We want something in stock and reasonably priced, given that our water is basically fine. Please advise. The plumber is coming on Monday to hook our new kitchen up,. Thank you! This post was edited by CT_Newbie on Tue, Oct 29, 13 at 21:05

it makes sense to think about this now and not later. it makes sense to protect your coffee machine. Your filtered water can feed a supply that then itself branches to the fridge AND to the bar tap / coffee tap. Where the water supply branches to go to the fridge is where you can put a filter behind the scenes, or anywhere else near the fridge, near the sink, or in an unused space around there, even on the far side of the fridge. The additional elbows do not reduce flow by anything significant. It's the filter that will reduce the flow, but this is not a concern for the two lines you are discussing. some people have a filter on all the cold tap in all the faucets, including those faucets that mix with hot water. In that case, they want a higher flow (not a reduced flow) so it's either a cheap filter that doesn't remove much, or it's a 2-tank system. That is what i have seen or heard. anything i write out is given as background information, not a recommendation to take any action. You could have two filters in line: one cheap, one expensive. The cheap one intercepts the bulk stuff; the expensive one does the higher quality job it is supposed to. Cheap might mean a GE bought at HD for 2 or 3 of your cute $20 bills. Expensive might mean the kind of filter that costs many times more than that, and which you can only get from a high end kitchen showroom, and only if you ask. You could put an RO rnear the bar / coffee spot, instead of running RO water through supply lines. (less chance of leaching minerals out of the pipes on the way to the spout). If anyone local tells you that RO is not needed with your water, they may have a very strong point. RO may be overkill, but a high end filter may be good. This is another subject. I don't know what Toronto water is like, speaking minerally; I have heard that it's taken from somewhere deep in Lake Ontario and therefore always really cold even in summer. I suppose that Some of the people who work in high end coffee machine sales or kitchen fixture sales will be able to guide you about minerals.