What does the tap water quality results mean?
We’ve collected 1000s of water quality reports and simplified them for you. Here’s an explanation of what the results mean and how TAPP Water filters may improve the water.
Tap Water Safe to Drink
Water is safe to drink means that it meets the regulatory requirements in terms of potable (drinkable) water in the country/region. Most governments use the WHO guidelines for safe drinking water as a basis and then add their own standards / limitations on top of this. “Safe” basically means that the water has been tested to meet these standards.
But safe to drink doesn’t mean that it’s free of contaminants or issues. As per the explanation below there may be contaminants in your water at safe levels that could do long term damage to your health. This is especially true for babies, children and people with health issues. Also, some contaminants such as microplastics haven’t been regulated yet so you may be consuming plastics and other contaminants without knowing it. Therefore a water filter is a good idea even if your water is safe to drink and tastes good.
TAPP Water filters will turn your water from safe to drink to even safer.
If the public water source is reported as “Not not safe to drink” then you shouldn’t take any risks. If your water is reported as not safe to drink then please contact us on [email protected] so that we can assess whether TAPP filters will make it safe to drink.
There is no evidence that bottled water is healthier than tap water that meets the WHO guidelines. Find out more in our “Can I drink the tap water in…” section.
Taste
Drinking water taste is subjective but there are some general metrics available to define taste. Mineral rich (hard water) combined with chlorine usually makes the water taste bad. This is a common issue across the world in areas with hard water.
In addition to this high concentrations of metals such as iron, copper, zinc and manganese can cause the water to taste metallic or bitter whereas algae contaminants may give the water a rotten egg smell. Very soft water (especially filtered with reverse osmosis) on the other hand tastes flat to most people.
Finally people may have preferences for hard or soft water depending on where they grew up.
We use a combination of chemical attributes of the water and popular opinion to rate taste for each postcode.
TAPP Water filters turn your water taste from bad or ok to good or even great. Basically the way it should taste.
Limescale & Water Hardness
Limescale can often be seen on your kettle, coffee maker, glasses or around the faucet. It’s generally caused by a combination of calcium and magnesium. Although these are healthy minerals many people consider them a nuance.
In the report limescale is stated as low, medium, high or very high. Water companies don’t report limescale specifically so therefore we use the Langelier Saturation Index (LSI) to calculate the likelihood of scale forming.
TAPP Water filters reduce the limescale formation without removing the healthy minerals.
Read more about how to reduce Limescale.
How can a water filter help improve your tap water?
The next section of the report will focus on how a water filter will improve water safety by removing contaminants, improve taste and reduce limescale. Go back to your report for more.
Source of the reports
The source of each report is provided on the results page. Please contact us on [email protected] if you have reasons to believe that the report is incorrect or you have questions.
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