Seems to me that a decent ball valve out of sight would be useful, if the plumbing is at all accessible. It would take two steps to use the pot filler - or maybe one just closes the ball valve when leaving the house empty for a few days. My cabinet maker told me about a situation for one of his customers. A pot filler was installed before the range hood - and the guys that were installing the range hood dropped it, snapping off the pot filler. Water everywhere, of course, until the main water could be shut off. My low risk tolerance wouldn't stand for a pot filler. I won't even connect an ice maker to my fridge, after seeing the neighbor's house flooded when the water line to the fridge somehow popped off (or broke, but somehow ran at city water pressure for 2 days).

We have one. We bought a finished new construction house, and the builder put it in. We've lived in this house for 6 months now. Honestly, it's taken some getting used to - I was so accustomed to going to the sink for water. If you do alot of cooking, I think it's a neat gadget. I find myself using it more. The only thing is that I prefer filtered water (our town water taste of chlorine, IMO). We have an undercounter water filter, so if I'm boiling tea bags, etc., I tend to use the filtered water from the kitchen faucet. However, earlier this week I canned some tomatoes, and that pot filler was awesome. I put my big canner on the range and filled it up while doing a few other things around the kitchen. Our previous house had a pull-out faucet, so to fill the canner up, I'd put it on the counter top (b/c it's too big for the sink) and would pull the faucet over and fill it up, then have to lift it to the sink. The pot filler was much, much easier, although, I did still have to lift it when I was done to carry it over to the sink to pour out. Could I live without it? Absolutely, but for some tasks, it's really handy. It's more of a conversation piece than anything because alot of people (at least in our area) have never seen one. BTW, we have a Brizo one that does NOT have the swing joint (looks like all of their current models do). Having a joint would be handy, but I don't think not having is a big deal. We have a 5 burner Thermador cooktop under it, and if I have a big pot on the center burner, then it will swing over that just fine.

I'm with you Palimpsest. In an early plan for my kitchen where the stove was farther from the sinks, I was designing one! It would be a siphon with a little pump to a drain. BTW, I called the pot filler a "toy" because the OP said she didn't need it and was perfectly able to use a bowl. Plenty of women use their husbands--good for the upper body muscles, etc. I use whatever bowl or cup is waiting by the sink to deglaze for washing. My friend uses a saucepan for bailing because she can't lift the finished full pot either. A few members have sinks right by the stoves for filling and draining. Whatever works for you works. :)

A prep sink being necessary really depends upon how your layout is constructed. Ice, Water, Stone, Fire. Between the refrigerator and the main area where you will prep, you should have a water source (washing produce, opening dripping packages of meat over a drain). Between the water source and the cooktop or oven, there should be a piece of counter that is spacious enough to prep on. My personal experience is nothing less than 36-42" for a kitchen the size you are building. Next to the oven, and hopefully *not* the same spece designated for prep should be a "landing zone" to safely set-down hot pans, pots, etc without crossing an aisle. This is normally adjacent or as "wings" to the stove. Some people say 12", I prefer 18". In my L shaped kitchen, I needed a prep sink to make my island functional as prep space. If I'd not had one I would have taken items from the refrigerator to the sink just fine, but then had to transport them dripping wet across the aisle or used my oven's landing space as prep space. Remember, most of your time in the kitchen is spent in prep, chopping, mixing, etc. If you clean as you go, very very little time is devoted to cleanup (limited to service-ware and any pots that still had food in them when you finished serving). If you do not have water on a large island, you will face the perimeter during both clean-up and prep most-likely which puts you facing away from guests 80%+ of the time in your kitchen. This is my layout that I'm doing. To get the best function, I imagined 2 main prep spaces. 1) from refrigerator items land on counter above microwave on island. Are washed, prepped on other side of prep-sink, cross to range. 2) from refrigerator items land on counter between range and oven, washed, back to same counter, to range. Without the prep sink, my island is extremely unlikely to be used for prep because I will follow the path of least resistance and not cross after using the sink. This would create congestion where L5/L9/L2 are and it certainly isn't a 2-cook kitchen at that point. I plan to use path 1 most often. I will use the counter-space at L5, L9, and L2 between the sink and the range as serving space, to put prepared food on plates or in serving dishes. L6 is my landing space (or L5/9). If it's a busy holiday and I need 3 cooks in the kitchen, I could use L1 as a prep surface although not ideal, or double up at the island. The cleanup zone is completely outside of my prep and cooking areas so that I can clean as I go, getting things loaded into the dishwasher, hand-washed and set to dry, etc. We did do a pot filler. We cook a lot of rice and it will be convenient to measure right into the pan instead of going to a sink. I also use water during saute / stir fry a fair amount when I need to cook longer and my liquid has become too reduced.