Many drinking water customers are finally taking note that their drinking water has changed with time and may even change during the year. I am unsure if this is because individuals are drinking more water, home more thanks to the lingering effects of COVID-19, or all the news about water problems in Michigan in other areas are finally causing them to be a little more concerned, aware, or interested. For a more detailed discussion of aesthetic problems with drinking water, we recommend this article "Get Informed | Color, Taste, and Odor (Smell)."
Since starting our outreach work on issues related to drinking water quality and problems with drinking water, we have always told customers, users, and even professionals that their eyes, noses, ears, and sense of taste are valuable tools not only to notice and realize there is a problem but actual diagnose that problem. We are born with these valuable sensors, and even though the ability may not be the same for every human, they are tools we must use. Our website refers to this type of assessment or monitoring as Level 1 Testing.
Level 1 Testing is YOU. You make simple observations using your senses of sight, smell, taste, touch, and readily available information about the home. These observations can be observed at the moment or monitored as they change over time. What you see, smell, taste, or problems you are experiencing with your water, home, or yourself should be noted and recorded. These are basic observations you can make that help diagnose your water-quality-related problem or condition. Our updated drinking water diagnostic tool is designed for this type of self-diagnosis. Please remember not all drinking water contaminants have a smell or taste or create a problem you can see or even hear, but some do, and some of these contaminants are commonly present in drinking water.
Another way of identifying a contaminant is observing how the appearance or color of the drinking water changes over time vs the consistent color of the water. Color or appearance changes likely mean some change in the water quality may be associated with a contaminant or a potential contaminant event.
To monitor color, we recommend that city water users installing a whole-house particle filter install two filter housings, one of which should be clear, and keep the filter housing first. This configuration allows you always to see the appearance of the raw, untreated city water just after it enters your home. If the water from your kitchen faucet is green, blue-green, black, yellow, or red, and this water is clear, then the problem is within your home's distribution system.
This is a companion article to an existing article we published titled "Public Water Users - You Might Need a Customized Point-of-Use Water Filtration System."
The KnowYourH2O Team received calls from various local homeowners in a Townhouse Development. Each resident complained about slightly different issues and changes in their drinking water, but they all agreed that the problem started about four months ago.
Resident 1: Complained that the water was clear, had a slight odor, and tasted bad.
Resident 2: Complained about very discolored water, and a portion of the color would settle out and leave a reddish brown to black coating, but the water had no odor and a metallic taste.
Resident 3: Complained that the water was intermittently bluish-green to blue, and if they filtered the water through their water pitcher, the pitcher would get a slime coating that appeared black.
Resident 4: Complained that the water had a very strong metallic taste, would get intermittently turbid or discolored, and the water would get very gassy (they observed lots of "air bubbles")
Before contacting us, these residents notified the local water company, and the water company tested their water for Total Coliform, Iron, and pH, and the water company indicated "that all the test results meet the drinking water standards for the parameters tested."
After considering each individual's observations and experiences, the team put their observations and information to work.
The first question - What happened about four months ago?
We found that two events had occurred. The water company was working on repairing leaks in the distribution system, and there was a huge rainfall. Just after these events, the water company had a "Boil Water Advisory."
Since the source of this drinking water is a relatively shallow well and a spring, these sources are vulnerable to influence from near surface or surface activities and major recharge events (rainfall). After looking at the customer's observations, entering and inspecting each home, and subsequent testing, we discovered the following:
1. The toilet tanks in most of the homes showed evidence of accumulated sediment, slime bacterial growth, iron and manganese coatings, and iron-related bacteria.
2. The homes with an odor in the water utilized standard electric water heaters, and the units with on-demand systems had no odor in their water.
3. Homes that had a whole-house particle filter appeared to have high levels of occurrences of discolored water, odor, and nuisance bacteria, and the homes that used a whole-house carbon filter were the worst.
4. The house with the blue-green water was the only townhouse with copper piping. This was one of the first townhouses constructed; most other units used PEX.
The water company did not find a problem because it was not very observant during the system sampling, it did not inspect the toilet tanks, and it tested for the wrong parameters.
During the system's sampling, we not only collected first flush samples from each tap but monitored the water quality in the field from each tap for both the hot and cold water.
If the water company had conducted this monitoring, they would have observed that the discolored water issue was associated with the first flush out of the piping and was associated with very low to no chlorine residuals. These observations led the team to suggest a different series of baseline tests, and if the water company had tested for standard plate count, iron-related bacteria, sulfur-reducing bacteria, field-checked the chlorine residuals, and tested for manganese, they would have diagnosed the problem.
The problem was a combination of bacterial regrowth in the distribution system and the townhouse units that may have been associated with a previous "Boil Water Advisory." Since the townhouse units did not have backflow prevention devices, they were also affecting the quality of the water within the distribution system and the other townhouse units.
1. Install backflow prevention devices on all townhouse unit entry points.
2. Remove any whole-house carbon filters and install whole-house particle filters using a clear housing. If a townhouse owner wanted to remove chlorine residuals or chlorine by-products they were encouraged to install either inline filters or point-of-use devices (customized POU Filter / specialized POU filter) and not whole house filters.
3. We shock disinfected the main distribution line and recommeded regularly flushing the system at least quarterly.
4. The plumbing and distribution system within each townhouse unit would be shock disinfected and purged.
5. We encouraged the homeowners to check their toilet tanks for evidence of bacterial regrowth and indicated that this monitoring was needed to determine whether additional shock disinfection and flushing were needed and the frequency of this flushing.
In general, bacteria do not live within the bulk of the water in a distribution system, but the bacteria live and grow sessile or on the walls of the piping.
2. Over time, a coating can build up in the piping that not only can provide an environment suitable for bacterial growth but the accumulation of a scale or coating that may include high levels of metals, such as arsenic, aluminum, copper, lead, iron, manganese, cadmium, nickel, zinc etc.
3. The water in a distribution system can be changed by a combination of the level of pre-treatment, the environment and conditions within the distribution system for the water main, and the distribution system for the home, and both are related to the quality of the materials used within or connected to this distribution system.
1. Understand and know the source or sources of your drinking water.
2. Understand the common problems or challenges of treating the water you are provided and how these common problems may be expressed.
3. Understand the basic quality of your drinking water.
For these three items, the water company should provide the user with a Consumer Confidence Report. This should answer most of these questions, and if it does not, you should ask them to do better and provide more detail.
If homeowners have a treatment system installed, we recommend that, for an added protection barrier, a water professional inspects and maintains the system, tests both the untreated and treated water, and conducts annual drinking water testing.
