Keeping Your Tap Water Clean

Brooklyn is lucky enough to have great drinking water, but homeowners need to be aware of how to protect its quality.  What many people don’t know is that no matter how pure it is coming into your home, water can be contaminated by substances found in old plumbing and fixtures.

Drinking Water Hazards

Lead and other contaminants can leach into drinking water from older plumbing pipes or fixtures. Drinking water can also pick up dissolved minerals and other substances as it travels through the streams, reservoirs, and aqueducts that carry the water to the city, throughout the five boroughs.

Lead remains an invisible problem in some homes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:

Lead still can be found in some metal water taps, interior water pipes, or pipes connecting a house to the main water pipe in the street. Lead found in tap water usually comes from the corrosion of older fixtures or from the solder that connects pipes. When water sits in leaded pipes for several hours, lead can leach into the water supply.

The only way to know whether your tap water contains lead is to have it tested. You cannot see, taste, or smell lead in drinking water. Therefore, you must ask your water provider whether your water has lead in it. For homes served by public water systems, data on lead in tap water may be available on the Internet from your local water authority. If your water provider does not post this information, you should call and find out.

Water Testing

If our Brooklyn neighbors are concerned about the potential for lead exposure from drinking water, they can turn on the tap and let it run, from 30 seconds to two minutes, before using the water for drinking or cooking.

Better yet, you can contact the professionals at Petri Plumbing, Heating, Cooling & Drain Cleaning to test your water for contaminants. Our experts can recommend what type of water filtration system would be a good choice for your home. A charcoal-based water filtration system can remove sediment and debris in drinking water. A whole-home water purification system can remove a wider variety of contaminants such as lead, chemicals, heavy metals, and chlorine.

Our team is ready to help diagnose water quality problems at your home as well as repair or install water filtration systems. For more information visit www.petriplumbing.com or call Petri Plumbing, Heating, Cooling & Drain Cleaning at 718-748-1254.