Delta Leland Brushed Nickel Touch Kitchen Faucet with Pull Down Sprayer, Traditional Single Hole Touch On Kitchen Sink Faucet, Single Handle, SpotShield Stainless 9178T-SP-DST

First, for context: I am not a plumber; before this product, I had never installed a faucet before (kitchen or otherwise); and no one would ever mistake me for having any kind of experience that would qualify me as anything other than a total and complete novice at installing faucets. That said, for the reasons below, I would recommend this faucet AND recommend a DIY installation. I did a LOT of research and reading reviews before purchasing this Delta faucet (SpotShield Stainless). Our old kitchen sink faucet was another well-known and expensive brand (starts with "M"), but after just four years it kept coming loose from the countertop and then started leaking profusely. I was determined not to repeat that with a new faucet. I was a little hesitant about getting a "touch" faucet given the wide range of reviews on point, but after digging into things, I decided to go with this Delta "touch" faucet. A month into using it, here are my thoughts on the DIY installation and product itself: 1. DECIDING TO DO A DIY INSTALLATION I decided to install the faucet myself for several reasons. Nothing against plumbers, but some reviewers suggested that installing this faucet yourself may result in the "touch" feature working better, as you may pay greater attention to detail during the installation. I don’t know how true that is, but so far so good. Also, I wasn’t keen on paying someone else to install it, and while I had never done this before, I like a challenge. And a number of reviewers recommended watching a video that Delta made on installing this specific faucet (available on Youtube), so I figured I had at least a decent chance of not messing it up. 2. SKIP THE WRITTEN INSTRUCTIONS, WATCH THE VIDEO(!!!) I tried reading through the instructions first, but they might as well have been written in Greek (spoiler alert, I don’t know Greek). So I watched the Delta DIY video all the way through and felt WAY better about deciding to do it myself. I do recommend watching the entire video BEFORE you start installation, so you know what to expect. It’s pretty short (I think less than 15 minutes) and worth that additional watch. I then set up my laptop by the sink and paused the video after each installation step so I could complete the step and get ready for the next one. 3. DIY INSTALLATION WAS SMOOTH AND TOOK LESS THAN 2 HRS (INCLUDING BEER BREAK) Based on some of the reviews I read, I was prepared for the DIY installation to take all afternoon. As it turns out, even taking my time, installation took less than two hours, including 25-30 minutes to remove the old faucet, a beer break to celebrate removing the old faucet, and testing the new faucet to make sure it didn’t leak, etc. Especially with the video, each step was pretty straight forward. And I was particularly careful on the steps that related to the “touch” feature. At some points it would have helped to have longer arms, but I managed. (For reference, I am a 5’6” female with normal-length arms.) 4. ONE PERSON CAN DO FULL INSTALLATION The video notes in a couple of places that having a second person can be helpful for certain steps, but also shows how to do them with one person. At the time I decided to do the installation, I was the only one home. While I can see where having a second would have helped for some steps, I was definitely able to manage pretty well on my own. 5. MINIMAL TOOLS NEEDED I only needed a screwdriver and a wrench, as well as a monkey wrench to help hold pipes still while tightening parts. Most people probably won’t need the monkey wrench, but it was helpful in my case because of limited space to maneuver under our sink. 6. DELTA FAUCET APPEARS TO HAVE HIGHER-QUALITY PARTS As I am not a professional, I’m not sure how much weight anyone should give this observation, but it appeared to me that this Delta faucet has higher-quality parts than our old “M”-brand faucet. This was especially apparent with respect to the “anchor” part that secures the base of the faucet to the countertop (it seemed much more substantial). 7. “TOUCH” FEATURE WORKS GREAT (SO FAR) As noted above, I read a range of reviews regarding the “touch” feature. Some people said that the feature stopped working after just a couple of weeks or months. One month in, we have not had any issues with the “touch” feature. As our faucet gets A LOT of use, and we use the “touch” feature almost exclusively, I think this a fairly good point of reference. Note that the faucet comes packaged with a battery pack to power this feature, but you can purchase an add-on that will allow you to plug into an electrical outlet. We are using the battery pack and will see how long the first set of batteries lasts (reviews varied a lot on this point as well). I will note that it took me a day or two to get a hang of the “touch” feature, but once I did, things were great. Everyone else in family (kids and adults) got the hang of it right away. 8. WE LOVE THE “TOUCH” FEATURE We do a lot of cooking and baking and thus spend a lot of time in the kitchen and using the sink. We all love the “touch” feature and never want to go back to a fully “manual” faucet. * * * If anything changes, I will update this review. But so far, so good!

It has been nearly four years since I purchased this faucet and after my recent interaction with Delta customer support, I felt I had to leave a review for it to explain why you should not hesitate to buy this faucet. I won't spend a lot of time getting into features that you can read about on the product page. The flow handle works smoothly and the RED->BLUE temperature indicator is very helpful for avoiding unpleasant surprises. The touch control works as expected (with a couple of exceptions I'll detail below). So far it works as well as it did the day I bought it. Due to some previous issues with my plumbing I elected to hire a professional plumber to come and install it for me so I can't say if it's easy to install. However I can say that the plumber was done in about 15 minutes and looked at me like I had wasted his time on something so simple, so there's that:) When I installed this, the plumber predicted that the electrical valve would succumb to calcification and stop working in about 9 months. Four years later I haven't lost any water pressure and I'm still using the original valve. I've had two interactions with Delta customer support for this faucet. The first time it seemed that the electrical valve (the one the plumber warned me about) had stopped working. This was about two years after I bought it. Delta shipped me a brand new valve, I swapped it in and it didn't work either. It turned out to be my mistake. The battery holder is much larger than it needs to be to hold the 6 AA batteries that power the valve so there's a sort of frame/spacer thing that you slot the batteries into before you place them into the holder. If you take the spacer out, the holder is the exact size for using C batteries instead of AA. C batteries are the same voltage as AA, just hold more charge so I figured I wouldn't have to change batteries out as often if I used C batteries instead. There's nothing in the manual about using C batteries, but it did work, but only for a couple of days. Not really sure what happened - maybe the weight of the C batteries bent the battery contact or something? From that point on, even putting in a fresh set of C batteries did no good - I even used a multimeter to test that the batteries were good. That's why I thought the valve was bad. When the new valve didn't work either, I swapped the AA batteries back in and suddenly everything worked perfectly again. Weird but I'll take it. I have the brand new replacement valve tucked away in case I ever need it, but as I said, it's still going strong after nearly 4 years. The only real problem I've had with this faucet is the magnet that holds the sprayer in place on the faucet neck. Touching the faucet neck with soaking wet hands, or submersing the whole sprayer head led to water getting trapped around the magnet in the faucet neck which caused it to rust. At about the 3 year mark the magnet disintegrated and fell out and the sprayer would no longer stay in place when retracted. I dealt with this for nearly a year before deciding to call Delta and see what they had to say about it. The person I spoke with on the phone was extremely helpful and conscientious - he even used a mobile tool that let me show him what I was seeing with my phone. He knew exactly what the problem was, gave me a procedure to do on my end and sent out a kit to replace the disintegrated magnet. In hindsight the disintegrating magnet was completely preventable had I know that it was important to keep that area of the faucet dry. (There's no reason it should get wet normally). When the kit arrived, it was a cinch to pull out the old magnet holder with the supplied tool and pop in a new magnet, now I'm back to good-as-new operation, and the faucet still shines up like the day I bought it. I'm super impressed with Delta's customer support. The only other quirk I've encountered with the faucet is almost a fun thing. The touch control works by measuring changes in capacitance - when you touch the faucet then pull away, the electrical field of your body interacts with the metal in the faucet to register a "tap". 99% of the time this works perfectly (unless the battery is getting low in the control valve), but every once in a while the faucet turns on when something else modifies the electrical field near the sink - such as opening the microwave door, lol. I'm also able to turn the sink off and on via remote by activating a 5W 2-way radio from a couple of feet away! Not to worry, if the sink is accidentally turned on, it will stop running after a certain number of minutes. In conclusion, this is a fantastic faucet and it has exceeded my expectations. It's not perfect but Delta support more than makes up for that.

Extremely happy with this faucet. At first I thought the touch feature would be a dumb gimmick I wouldn't use, but now I could never live somewhere without a touch faucet in the kitchen. It's actually ruined all other faucets for me. Whenever I'm at someone else's house I instinctively touch the faucet to turn it on and get a bit annoyed that it doesn't work. Batteries last about a year. I've had this faucet for two years exactly and just changed them. Luckily when the batteries die you can still turn it on and off with the handle. It also slowly loses touch sensitivity and the touch to turn off seems to work even with very low power. Overall it works very quickly. You can touch rapidly to quickly turn on and off. You can also touch with any part of your body so if your hands are dirty you can touch it with the back of your hand or even your nose to turn it on. The light changes color to tell you the temperature, which is pretty useful too. Installation was extremely easy. Would have taken 15 minutes if our old faucet hadn't used some strange sized pipes and been such a pain to remove. Once we had the correct fixtures and the old one was out it went in in about 15 minutes. This is probably the most useful gadget I use daily. You won't be able to go back to a manual faucet.

I purposly waited to write this review as I wanted to use it for a couple of months. This faucet lived up to all of the positive reviews. The touch function works perfectly (it will shut off after about 4 minutes), the different pressure options work great, and it does look amazing.

This touch on / off facet works really well! I love the look, and it saves water as I can touch off while soaping my hands. We are on a cistern for water, so little things like that save alot. It saves on time and annoyance not always having to wipe up water from the back of the sink as I'm not drippong water there constantly. I installed it myself ( I'm a failrly handy 65 year old woman ), so it was pretty easy. The only negative, is that the instructions did not mention which hose was for hot & cold, so I got them wrong and had to undo them and correct that, which was a quite annoying, as I thought I was done!. Why would they not tell you which was hot and cold? They both run into the same handle, so you can't tell. Anyways, I love my new Delta touch faucet!

Soooo convenient to have the touch function. You don’t goop everything up when you just tap it to start and stop. Further, the spray function doesn’t blast all over the kitchen window sill in fromt of the sink! Amazon sold this same item (on sale) for $250 less than most home stores!

This is an awesome faucet. It looks great and works fantastic! Love the touch feature that allows you to turn it on with dirty hands without dirtying the faucet. The light indicator is really helpful also to show if it's hot, warm or cold water!

Absolutely the best purchase I have ever made for the kitchen. Beautiful looking and so easy to use. The sprayer docks perfectly and I’ve had no issues with it. Totally tecommend

Works great, however, not sure if batteries will last. Used the Duracell AA batteries provided in the package, but they ran out of juice within 3 days. Had to replace with new C batteries. Have them now for 1 week, so far so good. Hope it lasts.