I’ve always been told the water from the hot water tap isn’t safe to drink due to bacterial and mineral buildup in the water heater. Not that I can drink my tap water where I live anyway (America!) but even when I lived with delicous well water I never drank the hot tap water.
I thinks it’s more lead )and other metal) accumulation but yeah ……
The first time I remember hearing a specific , not generic, concern was when legionnaires became A thing several decades ago. People were turning down their water temperature to save money. But legionnaires is more tolerant of heat than most other germs, so there’s a window of opportunity where the water is hot enough to kill off most diseases but cool enough to let legionnaires flourish.
Even today, you’re supposed to keep hot water at 120°F at the tap to prevent scalding but your water heater at 140°F to kill off legionnaires. Most people dont
That’s crazy, I’ve never heard that. I know our hot water heaters are kept high enough that bacteria can’t grow, and every source I’ve found says the other risk is lead contamination, and we don’t have any lead pipes in our house, so I’m going to assume this is an old outdated rule. Plus for the bacteria concern, it’s being boiled again anyway.
Even without lead pipes, it may be worth testing ….
what about all the pipes bringing water to your house?
copper pipes used lead-based solder for many years, so can still leach lead into hot water
My reason for not putting hot water into the kettle is that I need to run the water for a bit to get it hot, and that takes longer than the few seconds I’d save
1: all the pipes leading to my house are out of my control and will be sending the same temperature and purity of water regardless of what temperature I set the tap to? The water goes into my house, to the hot water heater, to the tap. Or just into my house to the tap. Either way whatever is outside of that is outside of my control and the hot water heater can’t cause the water to retroactively absorb lead from pipes outside of my house.
And as for your second point. Running the kettle from cold takes like 4-5mins. Running the hot water to max temp takes 30 secs. Running the kettle with max temp water takes 1:30-2 mins. That’s still like a 50% time savings, for a 500ml load. I haven’t tried with larger amounts than that because I don’t need more than that, but I assume that the greater the volume of water, the more time it would take from cold.
Do me a favor, fill 2 cups, one with tap hot water, one with cold. Let them go to room temperature and taste them. Hot has a taste, and it’s not great.
Okay, now bring two cups to room temperature and then boil both and tell me you can tell the difference. I’m not talking about drinking hot water straight from the tap.
I’ve always been told the water from the hot water tap isn’t safe to drink due to bacterial and mineral buildup in the water heater. Not that I can drink my tap water where I live anyway (America!) but even when I lived with delicous well water I never drank the hot tap water.
I thinks it’s more lead )and other metal) accumulation but yeah ……
The first time I remember hearing a specific , not generic, concern was when legionnaires became A thing several decades ago. People were turning down their water temperature to save money. But legionnaires is more tolerant of heat than most other germs, so there’s a window of opportunity where the water is hot enough to kill off most diseases but cool enough to let legionnaires flourish.
Even today, you’re supposed to keep hot water at 120°F at the tap to prevent scalding but your water heater at 140°F to kill off legionnaires. Most people dont
That’s crazy, I’ve never heard that. I know our hot water heaters are kept high enough that bacteria can’t grow, and every source I’ve found says the other risk is lead contamination, and we don’t have any lead pipes in our house, so I’m going to assume this is an old outdated rule. Plus for the bacteria concern, it’s being boiled again anyway.
Even without lead pipes, it may be worth testing ….
My reason for not putting hot water into the kettle is that I need to run the water for a bit to get it hot, and that takes longer than the few seconds I’d save
1: all the pipes leading to my house are out of my control and will be sending the same temperature and purity of water regardless of what temperature I set the tap to? The water goes into my house, to the hot water heater, to the tap. Or just into my house to the tap. Either way whatever is outside of that is outside of my control and the hot water heater can’t cause the water to retroactively absorb lead from pipes outside of my house.
And as for your second point. Running the kettle from cold takes like 4-5mins. Running the hot water to max temp takes 30 secs. Running the kettle with max temp water takes 1:30-2 mins. That’s still like a 50% time savings, for a 500ml load. I haven’t tried with larger amounts than that because I don’t need more than that, but I assume that the greater the volume of water, the more time it would take from cold.
Well yeah, but if u put it into a kettle and boil it, it should be fine, cos boiling kills the bacteria.
Do me a favor, fill 2 cups, one with tap hot water, one with cold. Let them go to room temperature and taste them. Hot has a taste, and it’s not great.
Okay, now bring two cups to room temperature and then boil both and tell me you can tell the difference. I’m not talking about drinking hot water straight from the tap.