So I found this thread interesting and thought I would throw my experiences on here. First off, we currently have a flock of 12 birds. We are located very near downtown in our city and have not had a single complaint in over a year. I don't water my chickens, or rather I never need to fill a bucket or check their water. I designed, for very minimal expenses, a simple watering setup that utilizes a 5 gallon bucket (hidden inside a fake water tower I built out of wood scrap) which has a toilet float valve in it and two 1" pvc fittings coming out the bottom. Each fitting uses a compression fitting, for ease of cleaning, which feeds two water lines, one inside the coop and one beneath it. On each line there are three chicken nipples connected through standard sprinkler head connections (which happened to fit the fittings perfectly). That said, the entire system is sealed, connected with a standard garden hose to the water system of the house, even if the water shuts off for some reason the 5 gallons will last at least 3 days for my girls. Once every six months I pull it apart, which takes about 3 minutes, clean it out with a long brush (like for cleaning stovepipes but smaller, I got it for free somewhere) and I rinse it with a mild bleach solution. I probably don't even need to clean it that often as it is always nearly pristine when I clean it, but I would rather be cautious.
Now for feeding. I do plan on switching over to a homemade food of all natural grains and whatnot this spring, but for the last year I have used standard layers pellets and supplement. I also only feed them once a week. I used 6" sewer pipe to build a feeder that securely stores a weeks worth of food. The feeder will hold about 25lbs of food, or half a bag. I also have it designed near the water system on the outside, and it slips through a hole in the coop so the girls can access it. This means that I don't have to enter the coop at all if I don't want to.
I also stop by a local fruit/vegetable stand every day on the way home and collect his garbage. I usually get 1/2-1 boxes of slightly bad vegetables and fruit every day which I throw straight in the pen every night when I get home. They usually decimate the entire pile of food in hours. We also collect our food scraps and our neighbors as well. We don't put anything organic except avocado in the garbage. Not only do our girls love it, we have cut down from a large garbage can every week to less than half that.
Our girls are happy, productive, friendly, and clean. They produce somewhere between 10-16 eggs a day (even in the worst weather, like right now, I have never gathered less than 8 a day). They are also rather effective mousers as well. I happened to see a mouse attempt to get through their pen the other day and my girls nailed him.
Anyway, I will try to post some pictures as soon as the monsoon like rains stop so you can better understand the setup, but I highly recommend it, it works great. Very little time investment, very effective, and cheap.
