Is Tap Water in Your City/Area Drinkable and do You Drink It?

[Arrian]

On bottled water generally . . . . I have a vision of some guy down the street filling them with tap water from a garden hose . . .

Pretty much matches what I think too. Or maybe it's treated industrial wastewater...

-Arrian

[Cort Haus]

Yes, and yes. (London, UK)

[Arrian]

Originally posted by Asher
Is it true?

IIRC, there is some truth to it, but you burn through the filters pretty quick and they aren't cheap, so in the end you're better off buying the good vodka.

-Arrian

[Jon Miller]

I drink it. I hope it is drinkable.

JM

[MOBIUS]

Yes, yes. Ours is mainly from the hills of the Brecon Beacons National Park...

Nice soft water, definitely no limescale - and certainly no passing through 7-8 people on average before getting to you, as is the popular story about London water...

[Arrian]

Top shelf filtration
Myth: You can turn low-end vodka into top-shelf vodka with six filtrations of a domestic charcoal water filter (i.e. Brita filters)

They set up the experiment so that the vodka testers would each get 8 shots of vodka: 6 from the filtration stations (single filtered, twice filtered, etc...), 1 top-shelf vodka, and 1 unfiltered low-end shot. The tasters were asked to rank the shots.

The tasters were:

Anthony Dias Blue, vodka expert, executive director San Francisco World Spirits Competion
Jamie, degree in Russian literature
Kari, former undercover martini tester
Kari: "I'm wondering if you might have contaminated your experiment by mixing on the mustache"
Jamie: "either that or they're actually very sensitive and able to pick up on subtle variations in the chemistry in the vodka"

Kari was a terrible judge, giving a much higher score to the unfiltered cheap vodka than the top-shelf vodka:

Kari's worst: 3rd filtration
Kari's second worst: top shelf
Kari's third best: the cheap, unfiltered vodka
Jamie was a better judge:

Jamie's second worst: the cheap, unfiltered vodka
Jamie's second best: fifth filtration
Jamie's best: top shelf
Anthony showed off his tasting skills: his ranking corresponded exactly to the number of filtrations, with the top-shelf vodka picked as the best.

Anthony: "Passing a low-end vodka through a filter will make it better, but it won't make it a top shelf vodka"

They analyzed the vodka samples and found that there was no difference in chemical composition between the filtered vodka and the unfiltered vodka. You're better off buying the top-shelf stuff than wasting a bunch of water filters.

busted

http://kwc.org/mythbusters/2006/04/episode_50_bullets_fired_up_vo_1.html

-Arrian

[C0ckney]

yes and yes, swansea, UK.

[Zkribbler]

Yes/No. The water in the water mains is fine but I live in an old house and work in an old building, and so their internal pipes are rusty. The water comes out yellow, or red or brown -- too much variety for me.

[JimmyCracksCorn]

Yes and yes (St. John's, Newfoundland)

The water has a good taste to it, and is often nice and cold.

[germanos]

yes and yes, $1.5/m3

[Combat Ingrid]

Yes, yes. We have very nice water:

Originally posted by umea.se
The main waterworks at Forslunda supplies approximately 90% of drinking water requirements in the municipality. The water supplied by Forslunda is of very high quality. Forslunda uses a very simple process to treat ground water by removing the iron content and raising the pH rating. Chlorination is not required on a routine basis since the output has a minimal bacteriological content.

[DRoseDARs]

Yes and yes in Reno, Nevada, US.



Yes and no in Las Vegas, Nevada, because I don't like glowing in the dark. Scares the ladies, but attracts the guys. Hmm, maybe I should explore this... [/Dis]

[Solly]

Yes, yes, Yorkshire, UK. How can you not like the taste - it tastes of nothing!

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by OzzyKP
Yes and yes. (Rockville, Maryland)

Buying water is just stupid.

Some places buying bottled water makes sense and other places it doesn't.

I live in Minneapolis and do not and have no justification to buy bottled water.

There are places, however, even here in the states where I would certainly either only bottled water or would have an expensive filtration system. This is especially true of the home well water that is relied on in some rural areas.

[Solly]

I like to have a litre bottle of water by my bed for when I wake up.