This past week there’s something odd with the tap water. It has lots of tiny bubbles in it.
When I fill the coffee pot, instead of the usual clear water I get something that looks like thin lemonade. All smokey and impossible to see through. Wait to a count of ten, and it clears up starting from the bottom of the pot and looks normal.
I’ve tried a few simple things like removing the faucet aerator, and letting the water run a full minute before filling the pot, and it’s the same.
So what would do that? Extra chlorine?
Seems that if the water is going to clear itself standing in my pot ten seconds that it would clear sitting in the lines.
One possible explaination is that if there had a sudden rainfall or snow melt in your area, this could cause some unusual contamination of your city’s water supply.
There could be runoff into your cities resevoir, for example, and it overpowers whatever filtering the city does.
There could be a rupture in the water supply pipes, meaning contaminants can enter the water supply. This could be anywhere up to and including on your property. Is your neighbor seeing the same?
Here in San Diego, the water supply system is kinda old (built in the 20’s, and held together with little more than good intentions). My tap water has a lot of stuff in it that eventually encrusts on the fixtures. Home filtration systems is big buisness around here. Do you have a home filtration system? If so, your filters may have failed…
Extra chlorine might do it. Adding too much chlorine will lower the pH, which, if your water’s loaded with carbonates, will cause effervescence. The bubbles wouldn’t all come out in the pipes because they’re pressurized, like a closed pop bottle.
It might be CO2 added to lower the pH. Limits on Arsenic have recently been lowered from 50ppb to 10ppb, and the mitigation systems (where needed) are starting to come on line. Many of the techniques for removing Arsenic have issues if the pH of the water is too high…Injecting CO2 is one of the cleaner ways to deal with this. Usually, though, the C02 is removed by aspiration prior to entering the distribution system…as dropping the pH in an older system can cause the scale in the pipes to become unstable.
What you are seeing is air in the lines. Your town is probably flushing hydriants or something this week. It stirs things up and you get bubbles for a bit. I’d call and ask just to be safe.
The latter. As you can see, I opted for the post rather than the phone call. I call city hall all the time, for things like fallen wires and accident damaged street signs. But this one seemed nonthreatening enough to let the amateurs handle. As they seem to be doing quite well. Many things I hadn’t considered.
Mr Geek is a hydrogeologist for water utility here in Las Vegas. This is what he said about it (He talked I typed):
What you are describing is called air entrainment. Air entrainment can occur from several situations.
Municipal Water systems are supposed to be kept under pressure to reduce the risk of water contamination if there is a leak in the system. System pressure is usually maintained around 100 psi. Air can be dissolved in the water that will appear clear untill the pressure is released. Exactly the same as carbonated soda, beer or champange.
If the water in the municipal system comes from deep wells, dissolved air in the groundwater can come out of solution exactly as described.
There are wells in Las Vegas that effervesce, some produce water that appears milky white and gradually settles out clear, some water bubbles like a carbonated soda.
Laboratory analysis has been conducted on the dissolved gas and in every sample it was the gasses that compose the atmosphere in atmospheric proportions.
Air can also be entrained in a reservoir or treatment plant if the water cascades over a weir prior to being pressurized in the pipeline.
The third and most likely scenario (especially if entrainment is a sudden new development), in a pump station in the distribution system there is either a breach in the intake side of a pump that sucks air and mixes it into the pipe or the intake for a pump is drawing from too close to a free surface and a whirlpool is drawing air into the pump.
In the last scenario your water utility should be notified as the probably need to make repairs to equipment. Without complaints from customers the utility may be completely unaware of the problem.
You didn’t say whether you were using the hot water or cold tap water to fill the coffee pot. I’ve noticed this phenomenon before–but it only occurred with the hot water, so I assume it has to do with the hot water heater making bubbles in the water.
Our water department produces an annual brochure they send to all of us. Very interesting reading. They lists the tests they perform and the results, along with the standards set by the state and federal governments. Everything they say says our water is just fine. In fact, it’s superfine.
Still, I have a Purr water filter on the kitchen tap for all drinking needs, and on occasion when I replace the filter with a new one, I’ll crack open the old one for a look, especially when the weight of it is like a bowling ball compared to the featherweight of the new one. Acounting for sand and particulate matter in the lines is one thing, but the filter not only traps a whole lotta crap, but the filtered tasted is very different from the unfilitered “clean” water my city utility says is fine nonetheless.
