Do you use a water filter? (Portland: apartment, house, buy)

[Shellsandwater]

Just wondering how many people on here use a water filter to filter their drinking water?

[Minervah]

Yes. The older building I used to live in had rust coming out of the pipes each time the water was turned on so you had to run it a little while to clear it. I bought a PUR water pitcher I keep in the 'frig so it's always nice and cold.

I have since moved to another old building but the pipes are newer. I still use my water filter though. That way I know my water is fairly safe and it's nice and cold all the time.

The cat gets this good water too.

[Or3g0n]

I don't know anyone who filters their water. I drink straight from tap water. A month ago I was hiking to 7,000 ft in three sisters in Cascade Range. I didn't bring the water and it was a 13 mile roundtrip hike. I drank directly from the COLD snow melt river flowing down from the high-altitude lake. I and my friend drank maybe good 1 liter of water each and we did not get sick. Water tasted so fresh and so natural, even more fresher than a bottled water.

[hamellr]

I'm like Minervah, only when living in a place where the pipes are in bad shape. Water in the Portland are is extremely good quality and doesn't need filters for the most part.

[Minervah]

I hope I didn't sound as if I were disparaging Portland water. It's good. It's the conduit one has to watch out for.

[figmalt]

We used a water filter after moving here from a place with crisp, fresh well-water. It was weird to always taste chlorine and treated water. After so many years, it doesn't taste weird anymore and we've stopped with the filters. We only ever used it for the taste anyway.

[gma221]

Originally Posted by figmalt

We used a water filter after moving here from a place with crisp, fresh well-water. It was weird to always taste chlorine and treated water. After so many years, it doesn't taste weird anymore and we've stopped with the filters. We only ever used it for the taste anyway.

That's interesting. The water here tastes so much better than the tap water in Ohio. We couldn't stomach the chlorine/metallic taste of Ohio water, so we had bottled water delivered to our house (and before anyone judges me for being wasteful, I will point out they were large five-gallon glass bottles that we returned to the company to be reused). I was very pleasantly surprised to find how pure and "tasteless" the water here is.

[khyron]

I've lived in a lot of different places, and I've used Brita style water pitchers and faucet filters for ages. Portland is the first place since NYC when I was a little kid that I've been where tap water actually tasted like...water.

It's awesome!

I was so excited when we first moved into our apartment here, it was an unusually hot summer day and I just filled a bar glass from the tap and was shocked. I knew there was no fluoridation here (which I have nothing against, and which Brita style things don't effect anyway) but I had no idea that tap water still tasted like this anywhere. In other cities I've lived in across the south and the midwest, tap water always tasted like metal and chlorine (almost like an extremely diluted version of a swimming pool).

The water is definitely among the many things I like about living here.

[davemess10]

I don't think fluoridation is the issue.
It is the fact that we can get first use mountain run off water. Mountain water is just better as it is pretty much straight from snow melt. Rocky Mountain states have the same delicious water (even with fluoridation).

I find bottled water one of the funnies trends of the last 10-15 years.
Had you predicted it, say in the 70s people would have laughed at you.

[khyron]

Originally Posted by davemess10

I don't think fluoridation is the issue.
It is the fact that we can get first use mountain run off water. Mountain water is just better as it is pretty much straight from snow melt. Rocky Mountain states have the same delicious water (even with fluoridation).

It's definitely not an "issue," like I said, it's not removed by Brita filters anyway, so it's irrelevant. People who say they can "taste" it can't, they just need something to make an issue about. In a blind test there's no way they're ever know if it was there...it's like talking to an audiophile about the magical thousands-of-dollars copper wire they'll buy for speakers and amps.