Tap Water – A cool refreshing frugal drink
Water water everywhere, but not a drop to drink.
That’s how my wife and I felt when we first moved back to my hometown. Our rental house was right across the street from a creek which runs through town.
A stinky, smelly, slimy creek.
I don’t know if it was in our heads or if it was actually the case, but we could’ve swore the tap water tasted funny. We also thought it was stinky, smelly, and slimy.
Which was too bad because we had recently became big time water drinkers. The tap water in Minneapolis was pretty good, but we used a Brita Filter to make it even better. But this time when we broke out our trusty Brita filter the water was still gross.
So we asked around and it turns out that most people in this town bought their water. My wife gave me grief for not knowing this, but I told her I never drank water as a kid (I was a chocolate milk junkie) and had no idea it was such a problem.
So five years ago we started buying our drinking water.
When we became members of the local natural food co-op, we noticed that they had an ozone water filtration system in the store. So we decided to give it a try.
The water was and still is delicious! The only problem was that I had to lug around these big jugs to get it. We decided to keep a 3 gallon in the fridge, and have two other 5 gallon ones for convenience(unless you’re the one carrying them).
It costs $0.40/ gallon, but we figured that it was worth it for the many health benefits drinking water provides. Such as:
- Helps Regulates body temperature
- Aids with digestion
- Lubricates joints
- Helps kidneys flush out toxins
- Been known to help with weight loss
- And it can give you an energy boost
We’ve been doing this for 5 years. We thought our drinking water problem was solved.
But then my sister posted this video on her facebook page:
Even though we don’t buy much bottled water, the trailer for Tapped scared us because it mentioned 5 gallon jugs might have BPA in them. I remembered hearing about the fuss about BPA in baby bottles about a year or so ago. We ended up switching our son’s sippy cup as a result of all the brewhaha.
But we didn’t think of our water jugs at all.
And of course I watched this clip right after I just refilled 13 gallons. So I guess I’ll check out the store for some non-BPA jugs. If I can’t find any we’ll go back to Tap Water. Heck we might make the switch even if I can find the BPA free jugs.
Tap water is much cheaper(At least that’s what Zach Braf was been telling me).
And since I’m always looking for ways to trim our grocery expense I might have to break out our old brita filter again. Now if I can only remember where I put it.
How about you?
Do you embrace the fact that you are about 2/3 water and drink up, (tap or untapped) or do you hydrate yourself by other means? Do you think “Tapped” is onto something, or should I tell my sister to stop scaring me?
Until next time,
-DD
Frugal Fixes Around the House – Duct Tape, Foam and a Rubberband
Just canceled Netflix…trimming the budget fat
I have never seen reusable jugs without BPA, but you would think there would be a market for it.
I always use a filter on the tap water and stainless steel water bottles. Occasionally I use a plastic container in the microwave, which I believe also contains small amounts of BPA. It is difficult to avoid 100%, but thinking about it at least has eliminated the majority of my exposure to BPA.
Tell your sister to stop scaring you. :O)
We changed over our small water bottles but didn’t even think about the jugs. We have a water softener so can’t drink the water from the tap. Previous homeowner installed it and didn’t have them install the bypass for the kitchen sink.
I’ll have to think about the jug issue.
cd :O)
well, I don’t like bottles, but I really don’t like tap water. In the next couple months I am going to get a reverse osmosis water filter for our sink – so I can start drinking some well filtered goodness!
Thanks for the comments.
@ Discover – I talked to m sister today and she thought that the new ones might be toxin free. We’ll see.
And yeah, I’ve heard that you shouldn’t heat plastic.
@ Christianpf – You can’t tell, but I’m mighty jealous right now. Enjoy your water.
I would choose tap water over bottle water every time. It’s cheaper and personally i can’t tell the difference. What’s worse is that some bottled water has a nasty taste to it, probably from keeping it in a plastic bottle
I agree with Jonathan, water bottles are unhealthy because of the plastic used to make the bottle .. If it’s a little bit old, the taste will be different ..
Anyway, great post, and great photo (made me read the post)
You may find this Snopes article of some interest: http://www.snopes.com/medical/toxins/plasticbottles.asp
@ ChrisCD – Sorry I missed your comment the first time. As I mentioned to Discover I talked to my Sister the other day and she said that she heard that this issue was like lead paint in that it was only really bad for little kids. Not that it’s great for anybody to get this stuff in their systems, but it’s less harmful for us old farts.
@ jonathan – I’ve had some pretty bad bottled water. so I know what you’re talking about. The big name brands are pretty good, but at a gas station I went cheap and paid the price. It tasted like the gas station just filled up the bottles out of the toilet and sold that to me.
Good stuff!
Hmmm…For some reason comments are slipping past me.
@ Mike – I’m glad you liked the post. Frank (The Happy Rock) picks out the pictures for my posts. I’ll let him know he’s doing a fine job 🙂
@ jungle rich – Thanks for the link, I guess freezing plastic is OK, which I didn’t know has an issue. But if you follow the the link in the snopes post, the John Hopkins guy does say you shouldn’t heat plastic.
http://web.archive.org/web/20041113025621/http://www.jhsph.edu/PublicHealthNews/articles/Halden_dioxins.html
We need a BIG Government rescue plan. Government fixes EVERYTHING!!!
Those darn commies put fluoride in the water back in the 50s, and it ain’t been the same since!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Unholy_three_cropped.png
I personally stopped purchasing bottled water a long time ago. It is rather expensive for something that you can get out of the tap for pennies. I’d suggest a Brita filter that you can attach to your faucet and investing in a few kleen kanteens to put in the fridge. It works well for me!
@ Ashley – That is a good idea. My parents have one of those but they don’t like it because the water isn’t cold. But having the kanteens in the fridge would solve that
You know, I used to drink tap water (after boiling it though) but now I only buy bottled water. Not only that, I buy the brand ones. Perhaps it’s just me but I believe these branded water bottles have to pass a certain level of Quality Assurance check. That gives me a peace of mind, and I that’s all I need to know. Back in my home country, tap water is not safe to drink even after boiling.
I’ll stick with tap water for the time being.
There was a time when I purchased bottled water and even had a water cooler in my house with regular water deliveries of 5 gallon jugs every week.
But it seems a little extravagant looking back now, plus there’s no telling where the bottled water came from in the first place.
There are companies out there that just take tap water and run it through a simple filtering process, and then turn around and sell it as purified spring water.
I mean, who knows really, these are corporations trying to make money by selling water, what’s next, portable air bags for better breathing and people complaining about the taste of “outside” air.
I’ll take my chances on the pipes coming out my kitchen for now, it seems to be the lesser of 2 evils at this point in time, and the cheaper at that.
Water, water, water, water and water. What so big about water? Water is our life. 90% of our earth have been covered by water. Why still this primitive back into this business? Put all chemical that they think is good for us, then 20 or 30 years, they just find out its no good all this chemical to us.
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