Breaking news, guys! Okay, maybe just for me – but! I just found something really cool: built-in hot water dispensers. No, not like those big Sparklets jugs and not like every other faucet that you can turn to hot – these babies are beautiful, compact faucets that spit out perfect 190 degree (F) water with the touch of a button. As an avid tea drinker, sometimes cocoa-sipper, periodic recipient of the benefits of instant coffee and theraflu, and occasional oatmeal eater, this is approximately the coolest revelation since sliced bread. Why, you ask? Why!! (Okay, here’s why).
No More Waiting For Hot Water
I don’t know about you (and of course every house is different), but in a lot of places it can take quite a while for your tap water to get hot. And even if you get the hottest hot water the second you turn the handle, if you follow any kind of safety regulations, chances are that water caps out at about 120 degrees. That can make a nice beverage, sure, but by the time its in the cup and you’ve mixed in your leaves/choco-packet/crystals/magic health dust/oatmeal, it’s probably erring toward lukewarm. But a dedicated hot water dispenser will put out an even 190 degree water which is just shy of boiling – no microwave, tea kettle, stovetop, or WAITING needed. It’s even hot enough to cook frozen vegetables without ever putting them anywhere near the stovetop.
No Complicated Water Purification Routine
For tea and French press or gravity brew coffee drinkers, there’s a whole ritual you have to go through with your water. Pour, Brita, chill, heat, brew, which is only five steps but is often both clumsy and time consuming. With a hot water dispenser, though, you can actually hook the faucet directly up to a built-in purifier so the water that comes out of the tap is not only hot on demand, but also already up to the crystal-clear quality standards you want for the best beverages.
Smart For Cold Clean Water, Too
A subset of these are hot water dispensers that can produce ice cold water as well as hot, which means that linking it to a water filter can provide you all the clean drinking water your family can handle. This is a very, very good option in my eyes for the simple reason that built in water filtration can be kind of frustrating. It’s either installed directly to your main kitchen faucet, in which case most of the filtration power is wasted on dirty dishes, or you wind up with a bulky, awkward contraption on your faucet to try to combat that waste. Having a separate drinking water faucet takes care of both problems at once, streamlining the look of your kitchen and extending the life of your filter.
Spectacular Temperature Control
The one drawback of hot water dispensers is that the temperature tops out at 190. Now, of course you’re not going to get actively boiling water out of a tap, but this makes it a little less ideal for stickler black tea drinkers. That said, most models can be adjusted between 140 and 190 degrees with a fair degree of precision, so if you’re a white, green, or oolong tea drinker (or if you just have a sensitive palate), you can get exactly the right temperature water you want, no waiting, and no thermometer or fancy temperature controlled kettle needed.
Effectively Unlimited Hot Water
So how do hot water dispensers work? Simple: you install a small point of use water heater beneath your sink to maintain a separate, smaller store of very hot water for your drinking needs. With the ability to put out about 60 cups of hot hot water an hour, I’d be willing to bet that even the thirstiest tea or cocoa seeker won’t be able to drink a hot water dispenser dry. Plus, most hot water dispensers are self-sealing (meaning that when you let go of the handle, the water turns off), so you won’t have to worry about a cat, small child, or absentminded housemate getting burnt or wasting the water by leaving it on.
Streamlined Elegance
What all this comes down to, really, is that installing a hot water dispenser is a great way to streamline your kitchen design, whether you hate your bulky water filter (on your faucet or in your fridge!) or if you’re bogged down with gadgets from trying to make the perfect morning brew. Hot water dispensers install perfectly either in a separate prep sink or right alongside your main kitchen faucet, can typically be chosen to match the style of your main faucet, and totally eliminates the need for everything from your tea kettle to that huge Sparklets water stand.
Tea drinker here. This is a “breaking news” for me as well. I would love to have one of those. Thanks for sharing.