Water in our house taste bitter – is it just us? ,and looking for cures!

[lbe]

Water in our house taste bitter – is it just us, our house? ,and looking for cures for the taste! We just moved to West Seattle. And… Yes – just starting to research, so I will be googling/binging soon.

We do not have a filter on sink, or the refrigerator water dispenser. Not sure how much that will help. The house is a bit old, and older pipes.

A quick search on Seattle water seems to indicate it is the best around?

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[trickycoolj]

Seattle water is quite good straight from the tap, especially if you come from a city with notoriously bad water. The northern half of Seattle (north of the ship canal) has a different source than the southern half, and I find when I lived at UW and Northgate there was a stronger chlorine taste without a filter (very detectable in restaurants that don’t filter the water in their soda dispensers). In West Seattle there is hardly a difference what comes from my faucet vs. what comes out of my filtered dispenser on the refrigerator except temperature. My home is only 2 years old so there wouldn’t be any influence from my pipes. I would suggest getting a water testing kit from the hardware store to see if you have anything possibly coming in from the lines. Sometimes older water heaters can have a lot of sediment in them too if you’re noticing it from the hot water side only. Occasionally the water can run brown if SPU is doing work on a water main in the area, but that’s really unusual.

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[lbe]

Sadly, it sounds like it could be our pipes ( $$$$ ???? ). We have some galvanized, and some are copper per our inspection report. I think the galvanized our in bathroom area, and hopefully copper in kitchen.

Thank-you trickycoolj, for the testing kit suggestion. And I will have to see if hot water taste different from cold water sources.

The color looks fine, but will look more closely on that too.

I will be asking the neighbors for a taste of their water soon to see how it compares.

Time to install a cistern in time for the rainy season? Or maybe just a few buckets :)

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[lbe]

I think I am all set for now – I have learned a lot ( one thing being, that a search of bitter water turns up biblical results).

I ordered a water test kit(s), will see what shows up, and then get the proper filter for the problem(s) detected. In the meantime: purchased water (?), run water a bit before drinking, or let water sit for a while before drinking, koolaid (?) :)

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[trickycoolj]

Both my dad and my grandpa have well water about 2 and 3 hours south if here respectively. They’ve got so much iron in their water that it turned everything rust brown! Toilets, dishwasher, showers, laundry. My dad bought his wife a hot tub and they had to use so many chemicals to neutralize the mineral deposits for the equipment you couldn’t even use it They both had to get pretty hefty whole house filters. Luckily you probably don’t have that intense of an issue! As my grandpa always says, just drink a glass of water from his faucet, you won’t need to take a vitamin!

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[JoB]

lbe..

you didn’t say what area of West Seattle you have moved to.. if you are close to any of the proposed rain garden areas.. that could affect water taste..

also.. if the house has been empty for a while you might want to run a tub full of water to clear pipes..

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[JayDee]

lbe:

If your bad tasting water only occurs after having water sit in the pipes, your problem is likely due to localized corrosion (Galvanized vs. Copper), if it doesn’t go away, call SPU and ask them…The water we have comes from an isolated watershed, and should be the same from West Seattle tap to West Seattle tap.

–

JoB: much respect, but the rain gardens will not affect water taste–our water comes from the Cedar River Watershed, not local rain gardens. I have never tasted purer water out of the tap than here; I even used to have galvanized pipe feeding copper pipe. Stray voltages could be increasing corrosion too.

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[JTB]

If you’re on the 4700 block of 47th Ave SW, the bitter taste might be from iron/sediment that was stirred up when a fire hydrant was opened to fill a maintenance truck for flushing a sewer line Thursday afternoon. The water was cloudy that afternoon and evening then returned to normal by the next morning after settling out through the night and normal use flushed through the discolored portion. We normally filter our drinking water and I do notice a slight off taste if I drink water straight from the tap. I think that’s probably from the breakdown products that remain in circulation after the chlorine interacts with organic material in the water.

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[JoB]

JayDee..

no.. the rain gardens will not affect water taste..

but the city lowering my water line to allow for the rain garden i will get next year did affect water taste in my house for a few days.

don’t know why

i didn’t drink it

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[JayDee]

Thanks for the clarification JoB. My sincerest apologies.

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[JoB]

sorry i was too tired to post the small bit of information that would have made my post make more sense..

days like these i long for a like button on the forum…

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