Neighbors who moved her a couple of years ago find the municipal water unpalatable. Mine tastes okay. Today I let a couple of gallons run from their outdoor tap before taking a sample. I agree with them. I don't like the taste. I don't know how to describe the difference.
We both have mostly plastic pipe, but they may have some iron. I'm closer to the end of the water line. They are out of town several days each week, so their water sits in the pipes longer than mine.
Any advice to make municipal water taste as good at one house as another?
If I had city water I would get a reverse osmosis filtering unit like I have on my well. City water is usually pond, lake or river water. Some places it's recycled sewerage water.
Been a _long_ time since there were any untreated municipal water systems in the US (as in before EPA existed) and it really isn't EPA's concern on the ingress side anyway; they're far more interested (and responsible for) the discharge side of things.
As for source, by far the predominant source is surface water, not wells for municipal sources. From virtually all rivers, lakes and a myriad of reservoirs.
Maybe the incomming main after the street is rusted steel pipe, see if it tases better after a 5-10 minute run. Charcoal filters help a bit and are cheap.
My incoming pipe is iron, too, so that in itself is not the difference. (We used to have iron household pipe and a well. Rust would stain toilets, but the water tasted good to me. In those days, I once bought a charcoal filter for the faucet. I decided the water tasted just as good without the filter.)
I can think of three differences between our houses. First, the occupants had been away 24 hours. Second, I took my sample from an outdoor tap, and I've often drunk water from outdoor taps that didn't taste as good as kitchen water. Third, they had a bathroom installed last year, so there is some fairly new plastic pipe.
When I visit, they offer me bottled water. The label says it's purified water with calcium chloride, sodium bicarbonate, and magnesium sulfate added to enhance the taste. I don't like it, and I don't think the problem is the minerals. I wonder if it's picking up a taste from the plastic. I also wonder if their tap water is picking up a taste from plastic pipes only a year old.
NYC owns a bunch of lakes upstate, and they're fenced, and iirc, at certain entry points they allow rowboating and fishing with a permit, issued in NYC. Anyone can get one, I think.
Baltimore has 3 reservoirs, and DC 2 iirc in Maryland, that provide most of their water. When the water level was low a few years ago, one could see a little more of one of the towns they flooded to "build" the Triadelphia Reservoir.
When the Baltimore system was upgraded 40 or 50 years ago, the guy in charge wanted a pipe from the Susquehanna River, in case there was a drought long enough to empty the reservoirs. IIRC it wasn't used for
40 years, but about 10 years ago, the reservoirs were down to 20 or
30% of capacity (maybe more) and they actually used a lot of Delaware River water. I think the guy was still alive at the time.
Indianapolis has had two reservoirs for the last 50 years or more, and in the Geiss or Geist Reservoir sailboats are permitted. In the Morse reservoir, motorboats are permitted. The last time I posted about this somewhere, more than 10 years ago, people didn't believe me so when I was there a few years later, I checked again, and it's true, even though it's drinking water.
I wonder if you smell something other than the water when drinking from a garden faucet. It may on occasion taste different to me too, but I figure that's the reason.
My tap water tastes like shit. But, the water that has run through the under counter RO filters and such tastes like drinking it out of a mountain stream. Same water.
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