QETTLE 4-in-1 Instant Boiling Water Tap | True Boiling, Filtered Cold, Mains Hot & Cold

The Qettle tap arrived promptly and very well packaged. We had three plumbers round to quote for installation and after much sucking of teeth and scratching of heads only 1 came back to us with a quote of £600 for 1 days work. Given the estimated installation time is 2-3 hours (and since when did plumbers earn £12,000 PER MONTH?!!) my husband and I decided to install it ourselves. We are competent DIYers with some small plumbing experience. What a wise decision that was - it was so easy to install. The manufacturer's installation video is great giving step by step easy to follow instructions and the kit itself includes everything you need. The Qettle was fitted into a 600mm cabinet and there was plenty of space. The whole installation went like a dream and probably took us 4-5 hours with a lunch break in between. The tap itself is really good quality, a nice heavy solid tap with a lovely smooth action and it looks very stylish. The water is boiling hot, we had reservations that it wouldn't be hot enough to make a decent cuppa but it really does make a great cup of tea and it's so nice to have filtered water on tap. All-in-all it's worth every penny, it can certainly compete with the more expensive ones available and gets the thumbs up from us.

There’s a reason for the number of good reviews for this product. All the components seem to be of very good quality, and the tap works just as you would expect.There is quite a bit of ‘stuff’ to go in the unit under the sink; the boiler (4l boiler is about 35(h)x 25(d)x 20(w)cm), the water filter, a drain which attaches to your sink waste pipe, and a little battery box which tells you when the filter needs changing. One of the biggest uses of space however is the myriad of flexible pipes which connect all the components. It needs a little thought about what goes where, but easily fits in a single 60cm unit, and it took me about an hour to fit and get the tap working.It’s worth running the water for a few minutes once set up to flush the system through- there was a small amount of gunk with the first bit of filtered water. One other thing to note is that the boiling water comes out somewhat cloudy- this is normal, as it’s just tiny bubbles- they clear if you let it stand for a minute, but looks strange of you’re not expecting it.The filters are significantly cheaper than rival products, which is worth factoring in, although they will still cost you £50/year if you change it as often as they say you should.In operation, the left hand side is a standard mixer tap, the right hand side is either cold filtered water, or if you press the safety button in and rotate away from yourself, boiling water. You can’t vary the temperature of this like a mixer, just the flow rate of the boiling water, which is good as you don’t want it firing out at full speed. Some steam comes out with the water, which can cause it to spit a bit if you pour too fast, although I’ve never scalded myself. The water is definitely boiling when it comes out- my thermometer measured 99.6°C in the flow of water.It will have to last for 20 years to pay for itself in energy savings, but that’s not why I got it- it’s cool and very convenient, so I’m happy, and it looks good, just like a normal tap.

I held off reviewing this tap for a couple of months to see how it performed. I’m happy now to say it’s a great tap, and wished I’d bought one sooner, but had been humming and ha-ing between this tap, and others on the cheaper and more expensive side of the Quettle. Pleased I made this choice, as it’s been great straight out of the box, and it was a surprisingly big box too! It’s beautifully finished and reeks quality for sure. The thing is there’s quite a lot of bits to get under the sink, with the boiler, filter unit, and all the hoses that go with it. That said, once you’ve worked out where it’s all going, installation is pretty straight forward thanks to the very informative fitting instructions. The drip tray provided is twice the foot-print of the boiler which was a bit of a surprise, but I realised that this is to also accommodate the optional chiller unit (which I didn’t go for because there’s a chiller in my fridge/freezer already).Operationally, it takes a little getting used to with the boiling water dispenser, since depending on what handed you are, you can end up all crossed up and potentially scolding yourself when making a cup of tea for example if you’re not careful. Of course you could mount the tap 180 degrees around, and solve the problem that way, but the normal hot water side would be rotating away from you, and if the tap is mounted close to a wall, you might not get the full rotation required - just an observation.Summing up, a great tap which delivers 100 degree boiling water at half the price of another well known brand. If I’ve one criticism, it would be the red child-proof lock (which imho isn’t very child proof) and is more a red rag to a bull than anything else. I’m sure they could come up with something better than this, but at least if the child got the red cap off, it would still have to press the button and rotate the lever. No kids in my house, so I don’t exactly have this worry, but none of these taps are completely fool-proof anyway…, are they??!!