To drink water out of the bathroom tap

[Hihosilver123]

I live in London, and my house is on mains water. At night, I fill my glass with water from the bathroom tap. My friend says you shouldn’t do that and should only use the kitchen tap. Surely, on mains water, the water is the same from every tap?

How do people with these tanks for cold water brush their teeth?

She probably grew up in a house where the bathroom taps came from a tank in the loft. If the tap is mains fed then of course you can drink it.

The only tap in my parents' house that was on the mains was the garden tap.

I grew up and still drink water from the loft water tank. Nobody has ever been sick or found anything weird about it. They've lived there for over thirty years 😆

Edited to add: it took me decades to realise the reason why the 'cold' tap was never cold in the summer...

I have a loft water tank and always have had. I don't quench my thirst from it but do clean teeth or use it to swallow a tablet if I need one at night, and water gets into my mouth and eyes when I shower. The tank is covered of course. Do people with a loft tank really carry water uostairs to clean teeth? I am dubious about the spit don't swallow thing too.....I mean surely you must ingest some?

Well quite. I joked earlier about my bedroom being in my loft but I’m sure
Lots of people across the world drink far dirtier water a daily basis.

I grew up with a tank on my cold and hot, so it was alien to me when we first went on mains on a combi, but I do it, after letting it run for a few seconds to clear any water sat in the pipes

(You do not want to know some of the things I've seen in water tanks that people use to clean their teeth boke)

Same as lots of people don't use hot water from combi boiler to cook or boil the kettle, just hot water on demand from the mains

Mains water supply is safe to drink.

If you have a combi boiler which has no water tank and takes water direct from the mains then that is fine. However if your bathroom water is coming from a tank in the loft which is storing water I wouldn’t drink that.

and a million people a year die from it. doesn't mean we should too. Particularly when there is clean drinking water down one flight of stairs

As a child I was always told not to drink water from the bathroom tap as it came from an asbestos lined tank in the loft. I live in a fairly new house now and would drink from both bathroom and kitchen (and do) as it’s all run from the mains.

We live in a block and our upstairs water is from a shared tank on the roof. Never drink from it but brush teeth, shower etc. About 10 years ago when we had a new boiler, the boiler man went up to check something on the roof and found that pigeons had got into the tank, including one which had died! Who knows how much pigeon shit we'd been bathing in

Urgh

If you have a cold water tank in the roof drinking water is better coming from the rising main in the kitchen. But many houses don't have the tank so it makes little difference. Tank water is unlikely to kill you though.

I grew up in a house with a water tank so although my bathroom is now mains fed I still feel uncomfortable about drinking from the tap. DH and DS do all the time though. I wont drink water in hotels because I don't know where it's come from which my DH laughs about (and also moans about the bottles of water he has to lug to hotel rooms - I drink a lot of water!).

Look in your loft.

Lots of houses have cold water tanks that feed the bathroom taps. People aren't confused.

I have a big black tank in the loft, the water is stored for the bathroom & toilets.
Mains water for the kitchen.

If the water is fed from the mains you could drink water from the toilet

I remember my dad telling me off for drinking water from the bathroom tap, but we did have a tank in the attic.

now i only drink bottled water or i boil tap water and chill it. Never straight from the tap

Do you have no mains water at all? There would be no need to boil mains water if you do have it.

I wouldn't. X

Hotel Cecil is the one where a women went missing and was found in the water tank in the roof after she had started to erm make the water really gross and guests complained.

We had a new boiler installed quite recently. It’s not a combi boiler as the water pressure here isn’t good enough.

Not drinking from the upstairs taps is from when we all had water tanks in the loft and that's where the water for upstairs came from. If you have a more modern system and no water storage tank in the lift it is fine to drink from the bathroom taps.

yup, no combi here either. I am a bit amazed at folk who don't have a covered tank and don't go into their attic reasonably frequently.