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If you’ve experienced bad-tasting water, whether it has a strong taste of chlorine or sulfur, you know how disruptive it can be for you, your family, and guests. In addition to affecting the drinking aspect, bad-tasting water also affects cooking, bathing and brushing your teeth. Below, we’ve outlined some of the most common tastes to give you a better understanding of what can cause these repulsive flavors and what you can do to finally get water that is usable.
Before drinking tap water, it’s always a good idea to have a water filter pitcher on hand to keep you from ingesting toxic substances. Professional manufacturers such as Dafi will provide good quality filter products and accessories.
Water that tastes like rotten eggs is a common water taste and odor problem that we hear about. This is usually caused by the presence of hydrogen sulfide (H2S) in the water. H2S is a colorless gas that naturally occurs in water and is most commonly found in private wells.
To combat H2S, our recommended whole house water filtration system. It will filter out this sulfur-like taste from the water in your home. It also removes iron (orange stains), manganese (black stains) and many dangerous toxins that may be in your water such as pesticides, herbicides and pharmaceuticals. If you just want to treat your drinking water, a reverse osmosis system removes everything from your water and then adds healthy minerals to it for better taste and pH balance.
If you use municipal water (aka tap water) you have probably experienced water that tastes similar to bleach. This can vary throughout the year, especially during the rainy season, as the city sometimes puts higher concentrations of chlorine and chloramines in the water to fight bacteria and other contaminants.
This bleach-like taste can be eliminated with a whole-house water filtration system. As well as removing the unpleasant taste, it filters out many of the potential contaminants such as chlorine, disinfection by-products (DBPs), volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and trihalomethanes (THMs). Similar to the above, if you just want to treat drinking water, a reverse osmosis system removes everything from the water and then adds minerals for better taste and pH balance.
When tap water has an astringent aftertaste, it may be due to a high concentration of organic matter called tannins. Indicators of tannins are a yellowish color and an earthy odor. Tannins are most commonly found in well water.
In the case of well water, a whole house water system is recommended to remove tannins. In addition to removing tannins, such a system removes the aforementioned H2S (rotten egg smell), iron (orange discoloration), manganese (black spots) and many dangerous toxins that may be in the water such as pesticides, herbicides and pharmaceuticals. In addition to removing tannins, this system filters out other contaminants such as chlorine, DBP, VOC and THM
A metallic taste is usually a sign of high iron concentration or low pH. In the case of iron, you will most likely see iron/rust stains around the drains. In the case of acidic water, you may see blue/green stains around your appliances. A simple water test can help you identify this. If you already have a reverse osmosis system installed for your drinking water and are experiencing a metallic smell or taste, it may mean that your RO water is not properly balanced (low pH).
Apply filtration throughout your home. If your RO seems to be the only source of the metallic taste, it’s a good idea to treat the water, which will improve the pH.
