My family just bought a newly built house in Austin. Everything seems great, except that the tap water has an intensely strong chemical PVC odor, so much so that I don’t dare cook, wash, drink or bathe with it. Is this common for newly built homes? I assume it has to do with the new piping.
Are pipes just steel or copper, or do they now include some sort of PVC lining? Do new homeowners typically have to run their faucets for a few hours or days to get rid of the chemical stuff? (Never had a true new house before)
Much of the new housing out there uses PEX (cross-linked polyethylene) tubing instead of copper pipe now. Could be some residual taste from the water sitting in brand new tubing for a while before your family took occupancy.
A little googling finds me a number of links where people say the smell/taste goes away after a couple of weeks.
I’d recommend running water for a while and see if the taste and smell go away, and that includes running hot water until it isn’t hot any more, unless you have one of those tankless water heaters.
And if the outside hose bibs are a far enough distance (as the pipe travels) from where the water enters the house and enough other pipes branch off of it, this would be a good time to water the lawn regularly. It’ll only help that one length of pipe, but at least the water would be doing something instead of going right down the drain.
At least you’ll have an excuse to take really long showers.
Also, as the smell/taste fades, you’ll get more used to it and won’t notice (smell or taste) it as much.
Maybe get a water filter in the mean time.
I don’t think so, I lived in a different Austin apartment for 6 years (with metal piping) and the water was perfectly fine. Must be that this new place has PEX pipes.
PEX is the same stuff that milk jugs are made from - I think you are looking at the wrong thing. Try your neighbor’s water.
How can polyethylene impart a strong odor or taste? The whole thing about PEX is that it is inert. Maybe the chemicals used to flush the pipes? In which case, run off plenty of water and see if matters improve. If not, contact the water supplier.
It should be pretty easy to tell. If you have a basement, go look down there. If you see red and blue plastic pipes hanging from walls or ceiling joists, that’s pex. You can also look under sinks or near your washing machine and check for the red and blue plastic pipes.
If you do, in fact, have pex, see if, somewhere between the copper supply line entering the house and where the pex begins, if there’s any valve you can crack open and let some water out. In theory, that shouldn’t taste like pex.
I meant to bring that up as well. If the supply line is pex, and it still tastes funny, then the taste is being introduced by the city.
But, even if the supply line is pex, it’s likely a different brand of pex, so it might not have any taste. Also, ALL the water used in the house goes through the supply line so it’s had the most use. The entire house might use 75 gallons of water in a day, but the kitchen sink might have only used 5 gallons, so it’s going to take a lot longer to flush anything out.
Is there any chemical (or taste) difference between high density polyethylene and cross linked polyethylene?
In any case, but if you google it, there’s plenty of people asking about their pex plumbing making the water taste funny. Also, the taste of the milk may cover any residual plastic taste from the container. Water isn’t going to do that as well.
I’m not saying the pex isn’t the problem, I’m just saying you can’t rule it out simply because your milk doesn’t taste like plastic.