Cold Water source

Factual Questions
1

I walk to the sink. I am confronted with two options.

Hot water. I understand hot water. Water is piped to my house from some mysterious point beyond the pale, arriving in a Large Metal Tank in my garage. The LMT heats the water and spews it toward my sink, where it emerges to scald my dishes.

The cold water, though, that’s what scares me. What makes this stuff cold? Does the local water company operate a massive refrigeration system to bring the water temperature down before they send it to me? I’ve searched the internet and found disturbingly little information about this subject. Is there a government cover-up concealing the true Cold Water source? I am afraid to brush my teeth until I learn The Truth.

(My first post to the SDMB… flame gently, please.)

2

Don’t worry… :slight_smile:

Deep in the ground where the pipes are, the temperature is cool compared to above ground. The water is just taking on the temperature of its surroundings.

3

I visited a friend in Tucson, AZ recently and found that his house’s “cold” water was quite warm. It made sitting on the toilet a weird experience, and drinking tap water fresh out of the faucet very unpalatable. I think it was an artifact of either his house or the neighborhood because I had visited him before in previous apartments and houses and did not find the “cold” water to be unusually warm.

4

Don’t know if I want to know, fiddlesticks, but exactly how do you sit on the toilet that you know the temperature of the water?

5

I see by your profile that you live in Georgia. Since water mains need to be buried below the frost line, in Georgia this probably means they’re buried only a foot or two down. Water mains, and the water in them, will always be the same temperature as the soil that surrounds them. So I bet if you think about it, you’ll realize that your tap water is a lot cooler in the winter than in the summer.

I live in Illinois, and in the winter, if you run the water for a minute or two, all of a sudden you run out of nice room-temperature water, the water that was sitting in the pipes, and start getting freezing 33 degree water.

Johnson: Hot water in a porcelain fixture will heat it up quite nicely. Nice warm potty seat… :smiley:

I’m betting that the friend had a rooftop cistern.

6

It was warm enough that I could feel it “steaming”…just like holding your hand over your coffee cup. Didn’t have a thermometer handy but I figure it must have been at least 90 degrees. Like I said…it was a weird feeling. :eek:

7

Actually, I’d bet the friend probably just had plain old underground water pipes like most folks have. Remember, we’re talking about Tucson in the dead of summer. In a place where the temperature may hit 105-110+ during the day and then only drop down to 80 or greater at night, the earth eventually gets quite warm, especially since soil’s fairly decent at retaining heat.

I grew up in Phoenix and can remember trying to get water from outdoor fountains in the summer. One would have to let it run for 10 or 15 seconds to drain off the water that’d been sitting above-ground, and was often painfully hot, in order to get the water that’d been in the ground, which was often quite warm to the touch.

8

There’s no such thing as cold; it’s the absence of heat.

so the water doesn’t ‘take on the coldness’ of the ground or whatever the pipes pass through, it ‘loses heat’ to the colder ground.

9

Thanks for your help, all. I had guessed at the underground thing, but my stoopid friend insisted that the water company had large refrigerated tanks that they stored the water in before they shipped it off to us.

Some people and their crazy theories, huh? :slight_smile:

10

No, he’s right, it’s the CIA–they know when you’re in the shower, and giggling madly, they push the button to cut off your hot water…

11

Were you taking a swim?