Nice bit of Kit
I installed a 4-in-1 to replace a Franke Minerva (3-in-1) that had suffered a failure. On removal the main tank of the Franke looks to have ruptured.
As this was a "brown field" install I had a few little issues to overcome - the Franke was installed at the time the Kitchen was fitted, so all the pipework was set to suit that system, slightly different install to the new 4-in-1. (We would have been happy with a 3-in1 as we have a water dispenser in the fridge, but they were out of stock).
Installation:
The tap fitted easily into the hole in our granite worktop and using the supplied tools was tightened up in no time. the 4 feeds for the tap functions being easy to identify, - I had to extend the domestic hot & cold water feeds, they are quite short at about 300mm, the Franke tap pipes being over 600mm. This was achieved with a pair of tap tails from Screwfix at under £5 for the pair.
The Filter unit was a straight swap out for the previous, complete with the PRV so no issues there.
The other area of difficulty was the over-pressure drain, the system requires you to cut into an existing pipe and attach the whole assembly, I have a Maclaren space saver sink waste under the twin sinks, which runs very close to the sink bottoms, and meant that the supplied system would have stuck out above the worktop. 10 minutes in my "come-in-handy" plumbing box and I adapted it to attach to one of the appliance drain points (dishwasher/washing machine connections) I assume I am no longer fully WRAS spec, but really don't care. This required dismantling the riser piece and replacing it with a 3/4" nipple to take the NRV.
The boiler unit sits in the cupboard rather than under as per the Franke, but given the history of the Franke, that's no bad thing, once the above was sorted linking up the remaining pipes is easy.
Use:
The tap is nice, looks lovely and my wife prefers the boiling tap operation to the Franke - which is spring loaded - this allows you to leave the tap filling a pan or teapot and not stand getting splashed with boiling water. It took us a little while to adapt to not putting a squirt of filtered water in on the end of the boiling water - a more positive stop might help.
Domestic Hot & Cold water is fine, the filtered water isn't really a need for us as our fridge does this already, but has proved useful for topping up the coffee machine.
We live in a very hard water area, (North Lincolnshire, water from the chalk aquifer in the Wolds) so I am interested to see if the filter alarm triggers earlier than the 6 months indicated, as I suspect that the water hardness killed the previous boiler unit.
Thoughts/feedback;
Very happy with the tap, we have had it in use for about 2 week's now, install took about 3 hours.
Longer tap tails, and an alternate over pressure drain that connects to a machine outlet - they are threaded - would be good.
Perhaps a more positive stop between boiling and filtered, but that's a minor issue.
My Sister inlaw is humming and harring - I suspect I will be fitting one for her in the next few weeks
(FYI - I am an experienced DIY/Self Builder, hence installed myself)