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

_John_

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.

Ashtoretet

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

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

In my humble opinion, it must be either bottled and (if possible) refrigerated, or RO (again, cold if possible).

Need2Exerc1se

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

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

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

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

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

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

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_

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our tap water is fine, so I drink that.

ValerieMartini2Olives

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

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

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.)

VeryKatie

I studied mine in university. Tap water all the way! My city is in the top 2 in my country for water quality.

socajam

The water in my house is triple filtered, it taste better than bottled water, even the spring kind.

Filter changed every four to six months

jacksonpt

House water is well water that has been softened and filtered. I also have RO/DI, but only use that for my fish. I typically drink bottled, but regardless, I don't drink enough water for it to matter.

Back when I moved into the house, the water testing showed off-the-charts high lvls of iron, thus the whole-house filtration. I haven't looked at the numbers in a long time though, so I don't know how good my water is these days.

Clean eating is low on my list of priorities. Clean drinking is even lower.

snikkins

What is RO?

We drink a combination of filtered and bottled water. The bottled water is a necessity because our cats are jerks and I have a thyroid med to take before I get up.

KANGOOJUMPS

I add whiskey to mine and I am good.

_John_

snikkins wrote: »

What is RO?

We drink a combination of filtered and bottled water. The bottled water is a necessity because our cats are jerks and I have a thyroid med to take before I get up.

Reverse osmosis

summerkissed

We drink creek water.....no filter, no testing! Our water is tannin stained so it's a brown color, the cows poo in it lol, animals drink from it and yup we drink it!......we also have very strong tummies and excellent immune systems.....ours kids have only had gastro once in there lives (as young kids when we were living in city) even when gastro and bugs go around school the kids don't pick them up! We think it's because they are exposed to the bugs and it's enough to build up our immune systems! We do buy bottles water if we are staying in the city because we can't handle the taste and smell of the chlorine!

Sued0nim

summerkissed wrote: »

We drink creek water.....no filter, no testing! Our water is tannin stained so it's a brown color, the cows poo in it lol, animals drink from it and yup we drink it!......we also have very strong tummies and excellent immune systems.....ours kids have only had gastro once in there lives (as young kids when we were living in city) even when gastro and bugs go around school the kids don't pick them up! We think it's because they are exposed to the bugs and it's enough to build up our immune systems! We do buy bottles water if we are staying in the city because we can't handle the taste and smell of the chlorine!

Wow

You know there's a campaign called Water Aid that fights hard to raise money to protect people in the third world from having to drink dirty water that animals defecate in

senecarr

rabbitjb wrote: »

summerkissed wrote: »

We drink creek water.....no filter, no testing! Our water is tannin stained so it's a brown color, the cows poo in it lol, animals drink from it and yup we drink it!......we also have very strong tummies and excellent immune systems.....ours kids have only had gastro once in there lives (as young kids when we were living in city) even when gastro and bugs go around school the kids don't pick them up! We think it's because they are exposed to the bugs and it's enough to build up our immune systems! We do buy bottles water if we are staying in the city because we can't handle the taste and smell of the chlorine!

Wow

You know there's a campaign called Water Aid that fights hard to raise money to protect people in the third world from having to drink dirty water that animals defecate in

Huhm, both abs make a compelling case, but I think I'd go with filtered water.

summerkissed

rabbitjb wrote: »

summerkissed wrote: »

We drink creek water.....no filter, no testing! Our water is tannin stained so it's a brown color, the cows poo in it lol, animals drink from it and yup we drink it!......we also have very strong tummies and excellent immune systems.....ours kids have only had gastro once in there lives (as young kids when we were living in city) even when gastro and bugs go around school the kids don't pick them up! We think it's because they are exposed to the bugs and it's enough to build up our immune systems! We do buy bottles water if we are staying in the city because we can't handle the taste and smell of the chlorine!

Wow

You know there's a campaign called Water Aid that fights hard to raise money to protect people in the third world from having to drink dirty water that animals defecate in

You mean they have clean water over there?? Here I was thinking the water was filthy with human waste, rubbish due to unsanitary living conditions if I knew it was only the odd cow poop and kangaroo poo I'd never give them money!