Quality of Austin water?

[Mckellyb]

It depends on where you lived before. If, like us, you've had Rocky Mountain well water, pretty much everything tastes like it was skimmed off the local funky pond.

You're likely tasting/smelling the minerals...limestone, probably.

The water here is a little hard, but I tell you what, it's nothing compared to lake Mead 'water' in Vegas. There is the equivalent of a bathtub ring in that lake's rock formations. It's hilarious, when you realize what it is. For the past three years, we sifted the pebbles out of the tap water. This is borderline literal. To put it another way, if you had a dark-colored car, and the sprinklers got it, you may have to take it to a paint shop to have it buffed, professionally.

Eventually, we purchased a water softener. While it doesn't help with taste all that much, it helps with both smell and allows soap to actually form BUBBLES!!!

I'll be up-front...I still didn't drink Nevada water, the taste was still ultra-nasty. Here, though, it's almost bottled, in comparison. My wife still wants bottled, but she's sensitive to taste, and doesn't like water to begin with, so I do whatever necessary to prevent her from getting dehydrated.

The water softener paid for itself in a year due to less soap used, almost no shaving nicks (the hard water made showers both unpleasant and rather frustrating), and the pipes in your place will remain unclogged. I've seen what 20 years of Hill Country hard well water can do to pipes (Buchanan Dam area). It's like the worst Drano commercial you've seen, but in the supply pipes. Full blast on the knobs = barely a trickle from the spout. It's like petrification, but from the inside.

The deposits are effectively rock.

Oh, and CLR can be your good friend.

Even so, because we still have it with us, I use it here on Austin city water, and it goes through about 70-80 ounces of salt per week. Takes me 15 minutes to recharge it, and I have absolutely no problem with the time spent. If you're sensitive to salt intake, read up on it, first, and there are reverse-osmosis systems which do not use NaCl.

$5 of salt, 40 lbs., lasts about 5-6 weeks. Money well-spent, IMO.

I needed a small and portable system, so it actually requires I do things to it. There are look-at-it-twice-per-year systems for houses which are essentially invisible.

[cleanwaterlady]

If you don't like the taste of Austin water simply install a reverse osmosis system under your kitchen sink. It will effectively remove >95% of all impurities in the tap water, including hardness, chlorine, fluoride, tastes, odors, metals, inorganic substances, and even some biological matter. It's also an eco-friendly way to enjoy pure water at home without the need to manufacture more plastic bottles (which require foreign oil to produce and transport). We have two, one in the kitchen and one in the wet bar for an ice machine...wouldn't drink any other type of water. Also, be sure to read the fine print on water bottle labels. Much of what you buy is nothing more than tap water from some other municipality. If it doesn't say "purified by reverse osmosis" don't buy it.