5 Reasons To Upgrade To A Touchless Faucet
These days, touchless faucets have become quite popular in kitchens. One of their main highlights is that they come with advanced faucet technologies. But is that all? Are there any other reasons to upgrade to a touchless faucet?
Touchless faucets are better than regular faucets when it comes to ease of use. They are easy to turn on and off. Moreover, these taps are known to conserve water and improve overall hygiene in your kitchen.
But that’s not all! There are many other reasons why you should consider upgrading your regular faucet to touchless. And if you keep reading, you can learn about all of them.
What Are Touchless Faucets?
Before describing all the things touchless faucets are good at, let’s first briefly explore what they actually are. As the name suggests, you will not need to touch these taps to turn them on and off.
Instead, touchless faucets have sensors that can detect motion, heat, and sound. These sensors respond to your actions or prompts and operate the faucet accordingly. Wondering how? At the core, the motion sensors utilize a small infrared light.
That light bounces off of any surface that’s in front. And when the sensor detects that the light has been bounced off, it turns the flow on or off. Another critical thing to note is that these faucets require electricity.
You will need to connect the electrical components directly to the wall or use battery packs to make the faucet operate. However, it’s not like that you can not use the tap manually. There’s an option for manual activation too!
5 Reasons Why You Should Upgrade to a Touchless Faucet
Ask anyone that has used a touchless faucet before. You will hear nothing but positives. To be exact, in comparison, these advanced models are much better than the regular units. Some of the key highlights are –
1. Ease of use
As you do not need to manually turn the handles of these faucets to operate them, it becomes easy to carry out kitchen chores. And let’s not forget that their operational mechanism even allows you to be highly efficient with washing and cleaning tasks.
2. Boost in kitchen hygiene
Another benefit that touchless taps offer revolves around the hygiene of your overall kitchen. But the question is, how a touchless faucet can improve kitchen hygiene?
Well, you do not need to touch the faucets to operate them. No touching means no transfer of germs from your hand to the handle or vice versa.
3. Easy to maintain
You would want the kitchen faucet to look brand new for a prolonged time, right? Touchless faucets excel in this regard! Because you are not touching the unit to operate it, you do not need to worry about the parts getting stained or dirty.
That also means that there’s no need to clean the touchless faucets regularly. This convenience is one of the reasons why most are upgrading to these advanced models.
In addition to that, one of the first parts that usually requires replacement in traditional faucets is the handle. But as you are not using the handle in the touchless versions, you do not need to worry about it breaking down.
4. Conserves Water
Touchless faucets work only when you need them to. This eventually cuts down water consumption dramatically. To give you a perspective, modern faucets run with a flow rate of between 2.2 to 2.5 GPM (Gallons Per Minute).
So, for example, if you are brushing your teeth by keeping a traditional faucet for two minutes, you are wasting anywhere from 4.4 to 5 gallons! Well, with touchless models, you can cut down on these water wastages.
That would eventually mean savings on the water bill.
5. Safety features
Typically, touchless faucets have a built-in mechanism that maintains the water temperature. For that reason, you will not have to worry about scalding your hands while operating them.
Style and Aesthetics
When you remove functionality from the equation, are touchless faucets worthy enough?Especially when you consider the style and aesthetics. Let’s take a deeper dive to further enhance your understanding –
Various Finishes and Design
Like the regular faucets, the touchless versions come in different types of faucet finishes. That includes stainless steel, nickel, chrome, oil-rubbed bronze, beige, and brass.
The same thing applies to the styles. You will have multiple options, including low-arc, high-arc, and pull-down.
Modern High-Tech Appearance
With the touchless faucets, you can completely revamp the overall look of your kitchen sink. In fact, the modern touch of these modes will make any space look minimalistic and modern, even the bathroom!
Reasons Why You Should Not Upgrade to Touchless Faucet
So, not everything is great about the touchless faucets. There are certain drawbacks that you should consider, such as –
Are Touchless Faucets More Expensive?
Touchless faucets are typically 30% more expensive than traditional units. To give you a perspective, a standard faucet will cost anywhere from $300 to $500.
In comparison, you will need to shell out an average of $400 to $700 for a touchless unit. Moreover, you should consider the installation charge. As you might have guessed, setting up the touchless units is tricky, increasing the labor fee.
Generally, you can expect to spend anywhere from $150 to $250 for the installation alone. In addition, the parts, especially the electronics, are not cheap to replace. That’s another thing you should consider.
Are Touchless Faucets Reliable
The touchless faucets made of high-quality materials and electronics are safe and reliable. But yes, you need to consider the fact that there are a lot of parts within these faucets.
So, without proper maintenance, you can not expect them to deliver reliable performance for an extended time. Moreover, you need to ensure that the faucet installation is correct.
Any wrongly or misadjusted part can result in an accident. For example, the temperature monitoring mechanism can fail, and you could end up scalding your hands.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. How long does a touchless faucet stay on?
You can set the flow time for most touchless faucets according to your needs. And in general, you can adjust the flow time from 10 seconds to 300 seconds.
Some of the models even have a feature that turns off the flow when you take your hands away from the activation area.
2. Do touchless faucets turn off automatically?
Touchless faucets have sensors that can turn the flow on and off automatically. As discussed earlier, these sensors utilize active infrared to determine whether you are trying to activate the faucet. Some utilize the same tech to turn the water off.
Final Words
Those were the five reasons to upgrade to a touchless faucet. And in short, touchless taps bring a lot to the table, from convenience to safety to savings. So, if you have the budget to get one, the upgrade will surely be worth it!