A bit under 2 years ago (at the end of winter), I had a Moen touchless faucet (87869EWSRS) installed in my kitchen. When the extreme cold started here a few weeks ago, I soon discovered that my faucet has an auto shut-off feature making it impossible to trickle the faucet overnight, resulting in my kitchen hot water pipe serially freezing. I saw that Moen makes a smart touchless faucet (7594EVC) with a "freeze protection" feature, so I ordered it. It wasn't until after my boyfriend installed it that I discovered that the freeze protection feature only turns on the faucet for a few minutes when the cabinet/control box temperature is <36F, which was never the case when my pipes froze - it was freezing in the exterior wall somewhere. Predictably, my pipe froze again this past weekend.

I was able to disable the auto shut-off feature by disconnecting the faucet from power, but Moen claims this could damage the control box. Given that my newest faucet control box was defective for a different reason, I've decided to give up on Moen and switch to Kohler, since Kohler has a bypass feature allowing the faucet to operate manually, making it possible to trickle the faucet.

I ordered the Kohler Rodean touchless kitchen faucet from Costco, but I noticed that Kohler specs describe it as having "premium material construction" vs the more expensive Simplice having "premium metal construction." I contacted Kohler customer service, and they told me that the Rodean has plastic parts on the interior. I asked to clarify which parts, and they could not say. What will be the practical consequences of having plastic parts vs metal parts? I'm guessing not good... I looked here at the service parts, and I couldn't tell which parts were plastic vs metal in the 2 different models: [www.kohler.com]
I'm also not sure whether the Moen faucet to which I'm accustomed is "plastic" or "metal." I liked it until I discovered it's impossible to trickle the faucet [which Moen absurdly claimed was "due to government regulations"].

I'd appreciate your advice. thanks!

Plastic used to mean cheap, but modern materials and engineering have changed that. Kohler makes a quality product IMO and I wouldn't worry about the internals. If anything, it's easier to repair if needed. There are GPM regulations on faucets and maybe Moen interpreted them to mean that a trickle feature would put them out of compliance, who knows. Good summer project will be to find where that pipe is freezing and install some insulation.

Re-Modeling homes for 35 years.
I am NOT a licensed plumber.

I've seen this numerous times that IF the flush valve is a Fluidmaster 400 and the small fill tube isn't connected to the overflow tube using their supplied air gap clip and instead is placed inside the overflow tube THEN the Fluidmaster fill valve can turn on and off at random.