Safe to drink boiled water from hot tap?

[Guy King]

The message from "Dave Plowman (News)" contains these words:

And how often have you seen a perfectly good cover left hanging off?

[nightjar]

Indeed, but non-electric kettles are very much in the minority and I wonder whether one with an external heat source would have enough water left to make a cup of coffee after filling the bowl, then boiling for another five minutes.

Colin Bignell

[The3rd Earl Of Derby]

No, you'll burn your mouth. ;-)

[Dave Fawthrop]

|In article , | wrote: |> Almost certainly, but do you really want to drink water that has been |> held nice and warm with a selection of dead spiders, flies, bats, |> rodents and other loft inhabitants in it? | |FFS, how often do people have to be told the tank should have an approved |cover and venting to prevent this?

How about tanks which were fitted before this regulation was introduced, which was in ????. Was the regulation retrospective? Who went round providing and fitting said covers?

[Salmon Egg]

Compared to what? It is very easy to scald yourself drinking water that is too hot.

Bill

-- Ferme le Bush

[Ron Jones]

Not all houses in UK have meters. I don't, and I suspect the majority don't either.

[Ron Jones]

Retrospective? How many acts do you know that are retrospective, not many...

[Ron Jones]

I think one needs to make one's own risk assessment. Only the OP will know what his tank is made of (Galv steel or plastic), the fitting of the cover, the tank insulation (often loads of glass fibre!), the state of the ballcock (brass or plastic), the pipe runs (copper or plastic), the joints (solder or compression), etc. Anyway, if the hot tap is not hot enough for washing dishes then... A. It's too cool, so up the theremostat, but I would suggest 55C max. B. It hot enough, but you have tough hands and don't feel the heat (then don't make it hotter as you will slowly damage your skin!!) C. Buy a dishwasher. D. Get SWMBO to wash the dishes - could be dangerous... ;-)

[Andy Hall]

That's good. Must be right then.

[Andy Hall]

It needs to. Tap water is a disgusting thing to drink.

[Guy King]

The message from Andy Hall contains these words:

Depends where you live. Round here it's Severn water and not very nice. Where I grew up in Kent it came straight out of the chalk and until the early 70s had nothing done to it all apart from filtering. That was smashing stuff - you could cut your teeth on it it was so hard.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Its generally safe to drink boiled water from anywhere, apart from the outflow of a chemical company.

[The Natural Philosopher]

nightjar A kettle does not boil water long enough to disinfect it.

Thats why our ancestors never ever drank boiled water of course, despite the fact that it has been known for centuries that it is the most practical way to avoid getting diahoerrhea from it...

[Dave Plowman (News)]

If you are worried about drinking water from a graveyard, it's up to you to make the tank safe. And I'll bet there are very few old galvanised domestic tanks left in service - they'd be 30+ years old.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Raising the water to 60 C kills about 95% of the bugs in seconds. Raising it to 100C kills about 99.999% in about 5 seconds, and 99.99999% in 5 minutes.

If your immune system can't cope with the odd bug, you had better not go outside at all. You CERTAINLY should not eat rare beef...

[The Natural Philosopher]

First sane response IMHO. ;-)

[Dave Fawthrop]

|Raising the water to 60 C kills about 95% of the bugs in seconds.

That temperature is actually *82* deg C to kill food poisoning bugs Some food poisoning bugs breed nicely below 64 deg C |Raising it to 100C kills about 99.999% in about 5 seconds, and 99.99999% |in 5 minutes.

[Dave Fawthrop]

|On Fri, 05 May 2006 16:46:56 +0100, Dave Fawthrop | wrote: | |>On Fri, 05 May 2006 11:37:54 +0100, Owain |>wrote: |>

|>|Dave Fawthrop wrote: |>|> The hot water from a *combi* boiler has not been stored and so is good for |>|> drinking. It sometimes looks milky, but this is only air and has no effect |>|> on portability. |>| |>|If the water is aerated can the water company be sued or fined for |>|supplying adulterated merchandise, or for the inaccuracy of the water |>|meter reading 1 litre of water when in fact it's less than a litre of |>|water that has been supplied? |>

|>Air in water is an *advantage* it improves the taste slightly. | | |It needs to. Tap water is a disgusting thing to drink.

Ours is quite pleasant, but it comes straight off the Yorkshire peat moors, not from the Thames, or a borehole which has lost all its air millennia ago.

[Mxsmanic]

Germs, yes, but there might be other inorganic substances in the water that wouldn't be good for you, such as very high levels of iron from the plumbing.

Possibly metals or minerals dissolved in the water that you probably don't want to ingest.

I don't think so. Especially in homes that have less than brand-new plumbing, the water that comes out of the hot tap can be awash in inorganic material. It won't make you sick in the way that water contaminated with bacteria would, but it may contain enough junk to make you sick in other ways (lead poisoning, iron poisoning, etc.).

A single drink probably wouldn't make any difference, but you would not want to make a habit of it.

[David Hansen]

On Sat, 06 May 2006 08:16:10 +0200 someone who may be Mxsmanic wrote this:-

Where do you think these very high levels of iron will come from? I doubt if many houses have galvanised iron water tanks these days, or for at least a decade. New work since the late 1960s has involved plastic tanks.

Other than the mains supply, where do these metals or minerals come from?