Welcome to Debate Club! Please be aware that this is a space for respectful debate, and that your ideas will be challenged here. Please remember to critique the argument, not the author.

How much thought/money do you put into the water you drink?

_John_
_John_ Posts: 8,642 Member
edited February 2016 in Debate Club
Those in the US should be getting a water report on their municipal water to have an idea We talk about "clean" foods so much, but what water will you allow yourself to drink?

I have an almost new private well producing water that is acceptable under EPA municipal drinking water standards (save for the secondary contaminant, iron, which is 2 ppm and we don't feed a chlorine residual), and I have a whole house filter for iron and particles down to 3 microns and a water softener (18 gpg hardness in the raw water).

We drink the softened water without putting it through an RO.

I drink tap at the office, though we do have an RO (we got it free, so I installed it) to knock the iron taste off from the galvanized pipes in the building.

«1345678

Replies

  • Ashtoretet
    Ashtoretet Posts: 378 Member
    Unless you're in Flint or a third world country, I can't see it mattering enough to freak out about..I use filters and call it a day.
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
    I don't, although I'm open to the argument that I should, I suppose. We have a water cooler with a filter at work, and I drink tap at home, although I will buy a bottle if I'm out and about and want water or use a bottle at the gym for convenience.
  • zcb94
    zcb94 Posts: 3,679 Member
    In my humble opinion, it must be either bottled and (if possible) refrigerated, or RO (again, cold if possible).
  • Need2Exerc1se
    Need2Exerc1se Posts: 13,576 Member
    Ashtoretet wrote: »
    Unless you're in Flint or a third world country, I can't see it mattering enough to freak out about..I use filters and call it a day.

    Of course, that's likely what the people of Flint thought before they started getting sick. :/
  • Need2Exerc1se
    Need2Exerc1se Posts: 13,576 Member
    edited February 2016
    We have a well that was safe at last check (about 2 years ago) and a spring that I believe would be safe but we only use it to water the garden. We pay for city water in the house. I drink tap water run through a filter, my husband drinks purchased bottled water (though he doesn't drink much plain water). Our ice maker has a filter. We cook and bathe with tap. The office where I work provides bottled water.

    I've never really tallied up how much it all costs. The water bill is usually < $30 month and we don't buy expensive bottled water or use a lot so probably around $40 a month, but probably less than half of that is water we consume. The rest would be for bathing and cleaning.
  • MonkeyMel21
    MonkeyMel21 Posts: 2,388 Member
    We have a filter in our fridge so we use that for our drinking water (just city water). We got a letter a while ago saying that there's a somewhat higher lead content in our town's water and it gave us tips on how to reduce it. So I use the filtered water for cooking also. At work I use ozarka water since we have that giant water bottle thing. That's about it.
  • senecarr
    senecarr Posts: 5,377 Member
    I use large jugs to get the filtered city water from my work for use as drinking as it will have fluoride for my kids. My home is on a well and the arsenic level was around 12 ppb, so an updated RO was installed before I took possession of the house. I generally use the RO line just for cooking or for drinking water for pets.
  • LHWhite903
    LHWhite903 Posts: 208 Member
    I drink mostly distilled water. Yes, I know it's a bit more costly to buy than just drinking filtered tap, but I have this mental thing about chlorine. Filters only remove the smell, the chlorine is still in there and that bothers me a bit. It's worth the price for the convenience of not having to make it myself, to me, and all that's in there is water. I get my minerals from my food and my Simply One vitamins.
    Of course, when I'm out, or when I drink hot tea/coffee, I don't worry about it. As long as I mostly avoid chemicals in my drinks, I'm fine.
    It's an eccentricity of mine, is all.
  • Duchy82
    Duchy82 Posts: 560 Member
    edited February 2016
    Apparently the tap water in the UK is mostly safer to drink than even bottled water (although I can't find the study I read stating this, anymore ) so at home I drink tap water. At work we have water dispensers with a filter so I drink that. Honestly though I don't really think about it.
  • The_Enginerd
    The_Enginerd Posts: 3,982 Member
    I'm on city water and I drink tap water. Sometimes filtered with a Brita filter to remove the chlorine taste, sometimes not, or just straight tap for cooking. Our water is quite hard, but all of the contaminate levels are okay.
  • _John_
    _John_ Posts: 8,642 Member
    LHWhite903 wrote: »
    I drink mostly distilled water. Yes, I know it's a bit more costly to buy than just drinking filtered tap, but I have this mental thing about chlorine. Filters only remove the smell, the chlorine is still in there and that bothers me a bit. It's worth the price for the convenience of not having to make it myself, to me, and all that's in there is water. I get my minerals from my food and my Simply One vitamins.
    Of course, when I'm out, or when I drink hot tea/coffee, I don't worry about it. As long as I mostly avoid chemicals in my drinks, I'm fine.
    It's an eccentricity of mine, is all.

    As long as your municipality is within spec, activated carbon filtration should add no more than 5 ppm chloride (5 mg/L) to your water. That is insignificant compared to dietary chloride/chloride that may already be found in your water supply.

    I do not miss the chlorine in municipal water, but I understand and agree with the why they do it for public water supplies.

    (keep track of your n's and d's as you tldr my post).
  • 100df
    100df Posts: 668 Member
    We have a well and test it every 2 or 3 years. Everything is well below state and federal standards so we drink it. I will buy a bottle if I am out and thirsty.

    In terms of cost, we.paid a lot. The well collapsed a couple of years ago and it cost $12k to get water back in the house.
  • jhall260
    jhall260 Posts: 111 Member
    I drink most water, even though there is a lot of 'stuff' in it. What the guidelines are missing are the emerging contaminates. Compounds that are not regulated that are finding their way into ground and surface waters. They generally pass right through conventional treatment systems.

    I've done my research on them at my work (University) and while most of them are harmless in low concentrations we are finding compounds such as artificial sweeteners, birth control, metabolites of many different pharmaceuticals (many anti-depressants), fecal sterols, metabolite of nicotine, the list goes on.

    That being said, I still drink the water, for now at least.
  • zyxst
    zyxst Posts: 9,134 Member
    I drink whatever comes out of the bathroom sink tap. Cost, I don't know because my province doesn't understand water meters. As long as it's cold and doesn't taste like sweaty rebar, I don't care.
  • Kamikazeflutterby
    Kamikazeflutterby Posts: 775 Member
    I drink tap water, unless I'm somewhere that the tap water tastes gross. After I found out that many bottled waters are from municipal sources I quit caring.
  • snowflake930
    snowflake930 Posts: 2,188 Member
    We live in the country and have a well. It was tested when we bought the house, but I don't know if I trust it. There is a lot of farming run off (both from livestock and from the chemicals put on crops) that goes into the aquifer. I live in Minnesota and we have very hard water, so we have to have a water softener. We have a separate line that goes to the kitchen sink delivering unsoftened water. We have a whole house filtering system, plus we use PUR water pitchers for drinking and cooking water. I do have some qualms about the drinking water, but not enough to purchase water from the store.



  • nilbogger
    nilbogger Posts: 870 Member
    Our tap water is fine, so I drink that.
  • ValerieMartini2Olives
    ValerieMartini2Olives Posts: 3,041 Member
    The town I live in now has pretty good tap water. However, I am moving to a new town which has notoriously bad water. I know for a fact because I've lived here once, and currently work here. When I lived here the first time, after several months of cloudy/milky/almost stagnant tasting water, I bought a filter and pitcher. That's the only way I will drink water from the tap and use to make ice cubes. I buy a 6 pack of filters a year, so... maybe $10 worth of thought per year?
  • MommyMeggo
    MommyMeggo Posts: 1,222 Member
    edited February 2016
    Fridge filter for ice and drinking water. Cook with tap. Coffee with filtered water. Tap actually tastes fine. Our water is a tad hard- but not enough to pay for a softener. *At work I drink filtered tap and bring ice from home in my Yeti.
  • valente347
    valente347 Posts: 201 Member
    edited February 2016
    I have always drunk tap water, but in some places the minerals and/or chlorine are a bit much for my taste when drunk straight out of the tap. So I keep an open carafe of water in the fridge, and most of the chlorine evaporates and the mineral taste is muted with the cold. I'm pretty flexible on taste since my family moves a lot per the whims of the military.

    I don't bother with bottled water since it's usually just municipal with the annoying drawback that I have to find a place to store it. That being said, I feel fortunate that I currently take tap water for granted, and would probably never drink it again if I lived in Flint right now.

    (Edited for missing word.)