Considerations When Buying a Home Water Dispenser
There are a number of considerations you should make when deciding on a home water dispenser, including:
Capacity
Most top-loading and bottom-loading home water dispensers are designed to hold water bottles of up to 5 gallons in size. You should expect a unit to hold a 3-gallon water bottle at the very least—this will reduce the number of times you have to refill the bottle during use.
Bottleless drinking water dispensers have the advantage of having no maximum capacity, as they’re connected up to your home’s water line.
Ease of Use
There’s no complex science to using any type of filtered water cooler—you just press the hot or cold water button depending on what you want—but some do require a bit of extra maintenance.
Top and bottom-loading water dispensers need to be refilled, depending on the size of your household and how much water you use. If mobility is an issue for you, you might struggle with a top-loading cooler in particular, which requires lifting a heavy water bottle up high.
Energy Efficiency
Most water coolers are constantly switched on, which allows you access to hot and cold water all the time. If you don’t want to wait around for your water to heat up or cool down, look for a water cooler dispenser that has an Energy Star rating, which means it’s been designed to be energy conscious and won’t waste energy while switched on.
You might not want to use your machine for hot or cold water all the time. If, for instance, you wanted hot water for cups of tea or coffee only in the morning, there are plenty of machines that allow you to turn off the heating function in the afternoon and only have the refrigerator running, which would help you to cut down on energy-wasting. The same also goes for the cooling function.
Temperature Features
The basic expectation for a water dispenser, whether it’s a countertop, top-loading or bottom-loading unit, is that it’ll have both hot and cold temperature options.
The hot should be near-boiling, hot enough to use in hot beverages and instant foods. The cold is usually around 50°F, or 10 degrees cooler than room temperature. Some water coolers also have a room temperature water option, but this isn’t common.
Safety Features
If you’re planning to have your whole family use your water cooler, you’ll want to look for one that has a safety lock on the hot water spout.
Accidents can happen, and you don’t want your young children to scald themselves by switching the hot water on when you’re not around. Luckily, almost every water dispenser we’ve come across has some sort of hot water locking feature, so you’re not limited for choice.
Material it’s made of
Some water cooler dispensers have a plastic exterior, which can make them look a little clinical and practical. The more expensive water dispensers have a chrome or stainless steel exterior, which tends to look a lot more natural and attractive in a modern kitchen. Plastic may not be as durable as stainless steel, but, for the most part, you shouldn’t experience any issues with opting for plastic instead of metal.
The inside components of a water cooler dispenser are generally made up of stainless steel. There may also be plastic involved, though the majority of manufacturers use food-grade plastic that won’t leach chemicals into your water. If this is important to you, look for “food-grade”, “BPA-free” or “BPS-free” in a product’s marketing material.
Household Size
If you have a big, thirsty family, it’s worth considering carefully whether you would fare better paying slightly more upfront for a countertop water dispenser that connects straight to your plumbing.
The setback of a top-loading or bottom-loading water cooler dispenser is that both need their water bottles refilled or replaced when the water is used up. Most dispensers can hold a water bottle of 3 to 5 gallons, and with the rule of thumb being that 1 person drinks 1 gallon of water per day, a family of 4 will use roughly a whole water bottle in one day.
Smaller households, on the other hand, wouldn’t have to change or refill their water bottles quite as regularly, because they’d naturally consume less water per day.
Available Space to Put It
The majority of water dispensers are designed to be space-saving, at around 10-12 inches wide and 10-12 inches deep, but if you don’t have any floor-to-mid-wall space available, a full-size dispenser (at around 35 to 40 inches high) might not be the best option for you.
Countertop water dispensers are designed to fit on kitchen counter space, so if you’ve got plenty of that free, opt for a countertop system instead. Most people choose to store their water dispensers in the kitchen, but you could also put yours in your study or your dining room if those rooms had more available space.
Maintenance
No matter what type of water dispenser cooler you buy, maintenance is a must. Your water cooler will have specific cleaning instructions, which will probably include draining your system from time to time and filling it with a cleaning solution, then scrubbing the inside to get rid of any scale or contaminants. Water coolers also have drip trays, most of which can be removed for easy cleaning in your sink.
Another maintenance job for some water cooler owners is replacing or refilling the water bottle.This is only applicable if you opt for a top-loading or bottom-loading water dispenser cooler, which refrigerates or heats water from an attached bottle. The regularity of this maintenance task depends on how much water you use on a daily basis, and, therefore, how quickly your water bottle runs out.
For water dispensers with filters, changing these filters as advised by the manufacturer is an unavoidable maintenance requirement. Water filters only last for so long—n the case of water dispenser filters, around 1,500 gallons or 6 months—before they need changing.
Failing to change the filters will result in unclean water, which devalues the whole point in having a filter in your machine. It will also slow down your water flow, which would result in waiting a lot longer than necessary for your glass to fill.
Associated Costs
It is possible to buy a water dispenser cooler and pay nothing (aside from the odd repair) after your initial purchase. But it would mean buying a countertop water dispenser that doesn’t contain filters, which would limit your selection somewhat.
In most cases, you should expect to pay one of several associated costs when buying a water dispenser.
If you buy a bottom or top-loading dispenser that doesn’t contain a filter, it might be important to you that you only use bottled water in your machine. If you need to replace your bottle every week at a price of $8.50 per 5-gallon bottle, that cost will add up over time. With that said, if you buy bottled water for your family anyway, the cost will be no different from usual.
Another associated cost to be aware of is the cost of replacement filters. If your water dispenser cooler filters water, it probably has two filters: a sediment pre-filter and an activated carbon filter.
Universal filter replacement kits for water coolers, which include the sediment-pre filter and the activated carbon filter, cost anything between $275 and $300, depending on the unit. It’s quite a high cost, but you’ll only need to pay it once every 12-60 months.