Moen Kitchen Pot Filler

Ben Carmichael

9 years ago

Moen Kitchen Pot Filler Classic Stainless Steel Review

Our kitchen — it’s where we spend most of our time when at home. We love to cook, and to entertain friends and family. And so when we began remodeling, we decided to invest a significant amount of time, care, and money right here in our kitchen.

I’m a big advocate of efficiency: of adding small things to your house that reduce the need for repetitive motions, or unnecessary movement. This is especially important in the kitchen, where you always feel like you’re bumping into your partner, no matter whether your kitchen is 50 square feet or 500.

In thinking about things to add to our kitchen to save us time and effort, we identified one easy fix: a high quality pot filler by Moen.

What is a Pot Filler?

Wait — a wait? In speaking with friends, many didn’t know what a pot filler was, so we began explaining it in this way.

The stove and the sink are two of these bottlenecks in a kitchen: they are where a lot of the activity happens and so are the place you’re most likely to have competing demands at the same time. By adding a spigot to the back-splash of your stove, the pot filler alleviates this problem — never again will you find yourself trying to fill a pot while your partner tries to prepare food, or clean up, in the sink.

It also helps with dish preparation. Say you’re preparing a seafood dinner, and you need to fill a giant pot of water. Unless you have a deep sink, or a tall faucet, this can sometimes involve tilting the pot at an odd angle, and filling it until it’s just full enough that you can back out the pot, hopefully (but rarely) without spilling.

Finally, it helps with some dish prep by making more water available. If you’re sauteing, and need to add a dash of water to cool it down, you have water at your disposal. Or if you’re making soup, and you need to dilute it. Or, in the worst case, if you begin to burn something, you can quickly cool things down without rushing to the sink.

Our process:

Having determined we wanted a pot-filler, we spent a considerable amount of time considering which model and style to install.

We ultimately settled on a high-end pot filler by Moen for a few reasons. First, Moen has an exceptional reputation for making high-quality plumbing products that last. We had confidence that this product would endure the heavy use we would not doubt put it through over the coming years and decades.

Beyond Moen’s reputation, we had confidence in this product for another reason: it’s well-made. When you handle it out of the box, it’s very heavy at slightly over 6.1 lbs. Like car construction, this is a sign that the manufacturer didn’t fill the product with a metal exterior and a plastic interior. In turning the Moen potfiller’s cantilevered arms, the joints are smooth, with no wiggle or give.

Ultimately, the pot-filler we chose was a higher end product, but the investment in something like this — something that could leak or break over time — is worth the extra cost, for the security that comes with a quality product over time.

It also fit our house’s aesthetic well; we live in an 1860 home in Concord, MA, with a high end kitchen. It’s a great combination of classic and modern — just what we were looking for.

Pot-filler Options:

In deciding which pot-filler to buy, you’ll have to make a number of decisions:

Wall vs. counter mounted: The vast majority of pot-fillers are mounted to the wall behind your stove, but there are options for pot fillers that rise out of your counter, like a faucet. You’ll need to decide which one you prefer.

Cantilevered solid-arm construction or hose style: The most popular styles are made from two connected, cantilevered arms, but there are styles that are fashioned out of a hose. The former is more classic, the latter more commercial or industrial in its style.

Material: Pot fillers come in a variety of materials and finishes, with chrome and stainless steel being the most popular. You’ll need to choose one that matches the rest of your appliances, and your kitchen’s style.

Modern vs. classic: Again, a question of style, but some pot fillers look classic and others very modern. You’ll need to find the one right for you.

Cost: The cost of pot fillers can vary dramatically, from about $150 to $900 dollars. The higher-end models will last longer, and have joints that are much more reliable over time, reducing the risk of leaks — something well worth the investment, in my opinion.

Installation:

The installation of a pot-filler is best left to a professional. For our work, we worked with Scott Robillard, a plumber and fellow author on A Concord Carpenter, to complete the work.

As it was part of a larger kitchen renovation, we had the walls open, affording Scott the opportunity to easily install new piping to the location in the back-splash.

Once he had installed the pipe, I cut a hole in the stainless steel back-splash in the appropriate location. This was easily done, with care and patience, using a drill, a bi-metal hole saw and arbor, and some oil.

Once the backsplash was affixed to the wall, Scott returned to affix the pot-filler to the previously installed pipe. It was a simple and easy installation process.