Need help interpeting some test results.

[shortylickens]

My water tastes like shit, but the local water board says everything is fine and an independent test company told me the water in my house is fine.

Unless of course I'm not reading this right:

 

[pcgeek11]

Looks like your Mercury Level is right at the maximum level:

MCL (mg/L) - 0.002 mg/L
Result - 0.002 mg/L

 

[mindless1]

Playing devil's advocate, your water could taste like shit because there literally is shit in it, but that wouldn't necessarily put any of their test components out of bounds, except maybe bacteria.

 

[Micrornd]

The pH is damn near perfect for taste.

 

[Mike64]

Playing devil's advocate, your water could taste like shit because there literally is shit in it, but that wouldn't necessarily put any of their test components out of bounds, except maybe bacteria.

Also, those results are from what's pumped out by the municipality, which isn't necessarily what comes out of the OP's faucets.

My water tastes like shit

could mean almost anything and as mindless1 alludes to, there are things that don't affect health but do affect taste that aren't tested for it great detail. What exactly don't you like about the taste of it? Does it taste the more or less the same from all of your faucets? Have you tasted/could you ask to taste any of your neighbors' water and/or tap water in another fairly distant part of "town" that's on the same municipal supply? That would give you an idea whether it's the municipal supply itself, something it's picking up on its way to you, or your own plumbing.

As for the test results, your water's sodium content is on the high-ish side and its alkalinity (which isn't the same thing as pH) and total dissolved solids aren't exactly low. Compared to what I'm used to here in NYC where the municipal supply has very low TDS, I suspect your water would taste on the unpleasantly-filtered-through-rocks side to me, though nowhere near as bad as what I've tasted in some places (e.g., Florida, southwest Germany).

 

[shortylickens]

I'd think much higher of you if you did not assume.

That IS whats coming out of my faucet. Did you not read anything on that list? It was collected by ME and done by a private company.

 

[mindless1]

It would seem as though you need a comprehensive solution, either find a bottled water you like, or get a water filtration system that filters as much as possible. Without any alarming levels of anything in the water, what other options are there? It's not like the water treatment plant is going to change anything based on a few people saying it tastes bad.

I suppose you could visit as many neighbors as possible, or esp. a new residence and play on their fear of something being in the water and ask for a sample (to taste, but you don't tell them that's all you're doing).

 

[Mike64]

I'd think much higher of you if you did not assume.

That IS whats coming out of my faucet. Did you not read anything on that list? It was collected by ME and done by a private company.

Well, I guess I did miss that, given that your report looks very much like those generated (usually annually) by municipal water agencies. But you apparently ignored (or didn't read) most of the relevant part of my post, in which I pointed out that only a few of the substances reported on in those results would noticeably affect the "taste" of water. At least before you could also set fire to it with a match, it had destroyed your liver, or had given you 6 kinds of unrelated cancer...

And frankly, no, I did not pore over the numerous pages of detailed results because, as I noted, most of them are irrelevant to the "taste" of the water. Moreover (and possibly more to the point), while I was happy to make a few comments I thought might be helpful despite a basically unanswerably vague complaint, the bottom line is (as I would have thought obvious) that I really don't give a rat's ass if your water "tastes like shit" (whatever that's supposed to mean).

But being the nice guy (ahem) that I am, I'll go ahead and give you the only possible "short answer" to such a vague statement of the problem anyway: according to the test results you posted, there's nothing whatever unusual about your water, so if you don't like the taste, buy a filter or move. And oh, "Have a Nice Day!"