It’s city water, which is very hard, and also hard on plumbing. Certified to meet standards, and even just won an “award of excellence”...great on paper, but is poor tasting, etc.
Only water we’ve used that was worse came from the Torrey Pines/Scripps water system: it wouldn’t even discolor, let alone dissolve Lipton InstanT Iced Tea, even when we let a glass sit overnight. It just floated on top, but worked perfectly in bottled water.
Second worst was some “natural mineral springs” water we collected at the spigot provided: it curdled coffee creamer. Sometimes, the city water would also do that, to a lesser degree.
In any case, we won’t use it for drinking or cooking. However, we also can’t afford tossing 3-4 gallons of water down the septic tank, for every good gallon an R/O system produces.
UGH. Sounds atrocious. I feel lucky to have great tasting water from the well.
We keep about 30 gallons of water in gallon jugs as emergency prep. Hardly ever have had to use it. Even though the well pump doesn’t work when the electricity goes out, the first thing I do is drain the lines into clean quart or gallon containers. That’s usually enough.
Hubby says he could hook the generator up to run the pump in no time at all. I told him, I’d rather do it now and then I could just flip a switch. He sees no point to expending that effort on his part.
He is in favor of the automatic stand by generator though. That’s because when we do have to use the portable generator and run power cords to the stuff, he has to expend effort. You see how it is? LOL
We have some water purification tablets, and some filtration bottles, and replacement filters, and directions for making your own filtration system if stuck in the woods.
Figure if we had to, the swimming pool water from the rain, or the creek water could be used in mega emergency situation.