I'm interested in hearing about this too. Hopefully someone will chime in.

jshore - which models are you looking at? I know Franke has the little butler series and Mountain Plumbing has the little gourmet series. I don't know anything about them though or anyone that has them. What about you?

lissa, I guess I'm in the same boat as you, I know nothing about them. I will be going to a nicer plumbing fixture showroom in the next couple of days, I'll let you know what I learn!

Look forward to hearing what you find out about them. Also what the total price ends up being as I guess you have to buy a water filter and a water heater in addition to the faucet.

We've had one of these in our kitchen for almost six years...love it! But you need to have significant space under the counter for the heating and cooling units and I imagine it would be tight under a small bar sink. In addition, the hot water reservoir generates some heat while the chiller is trying to get rid of heat and in a small space, that competition could create efficiency problems. The chiller instructions said that it shouldn't be placed in a space without some ventilation so I had my cabinet maker cut out two indentations in the floor of the cabinet above the toekick, one under each cabinet door. This seems to have worked fairly well.

I'd recommend that you read the owners' manuals on the units that you're considering to ensure that the size and heat issues can be addressed in your application. BTW, our unit was a Franke FLB200 and the chiller was an Everpure EWIC175S; these models are probably obsolete by now. There is also a Franke TriFlow water filter, possible sold in conjuction with the faucet. If you've looked at these, you probably know that only a single hole is needed in the sink and the hot/cold use a common faucet with a hot lever on one side and a cold one on the other side.

Bob

Bob,
Thanks for the information. I may have a problem fitting both the heating and cooling units under my bar sink as the space is limited. Possibly I'll have to give up the instant hot and just go with the filtered water. I like the look of the Franke TriFlow that you mentioned so I'll look into that.

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!

north40mom -
Thanks so much for the info. Do you remember the ebay storefront you used? Maybe I could go through them.

Glad to see I'm not the only one whose project is taking so long. Did you redo your whole kitchen? We're currently in the process of doing so and I'm trying to get all of the details in place. We're just about to order our cabinets so it will still be another 3 months before it's done.

Lissa--

The ebay vendor was "plumbing-deals". I looked up the receipt, I got the faucet, filter, and heater tank for $445 + S&H. I note that this vendor doesn't have any listed right now though.

And yes, we re-did our whole kitchen... we actually built an addition extending our existing kitchen, and started over with everything new. We were supposed to start in July and be finished Sept./Oct.... instead, due to contractor delays we started Sept. with the hope of finishing by Xmas... it wasn't, & since we had lots of travel planned for Jan & Feb everything halted until about 2 weeks ago... but at least we are in the homestretch. I must say it is exciting to be taking stuff like my Little Butler, which arrived last October, out of the box and finally installing and using it! Keep your chin up, these projects eventually do end ;-)

Doesn't the Insinkerator filter both the hot and cold water? I thought the cold water is cold tap water that runs through the filter & out the little faucet, and the hot water gets filtered & then into the tank for heating.

Am I wrong?

We have the Mountain Plumbing MT1101DIY in polished Nickel. This unit has two handles for hot and cold, and comes with the Little Gourmet instant hot device... you need to add your own chiller if you wish.

Don't know how well it works yet because we are still months away from completing our remodeling.

The faucet itself is gorgeous, and matches our Mico pretty well in design... both are traditional, some would say French Country in design.

Have a look at the link :-)

Here is a link that might be useful: Mountain Plumbing Hot & Cold