I live in Warsaw and my hot water is brown!!!

The cold water is ok but the hot tap is dispensing what looks like weak cocoa. Ewwww! Wondering if maybe the roadworks out there have broken a pipe or something, or does this just happen now and then?

Have you not used your hot tap in a while?.
And are you in a city?.

Give a bribe to your plumber
And things will go better

:)

LOL

I'm in town in Warsaw, and it was fine this morning!!

It was probably Rust
Have you been away for awhile?

Bwaaaah.

It's gonna be OK. Wait till tom morning. I had the same 3 years ago, wanted to take a good relaxing bath after a hard day and finally, well... I didn't. If things don't go better, well, call the famous Polish Plumber (the one France is afraid of ;)).

Turn off the light and see if it glows in the dark ha ha ha
Do people drink water from the taps in Warsaw?.
I am not talking about the three headed people either;)

You're being negative and cynical...

There are only 3-armed people and I must confess it's very useful !!!

I'd say it comes in handy, alright :)

(and the award for worst joke goes to....)

So if you want to have a 3rd arm then drink a biiig glass of that delicious braun-colored water. It's full of minerals and trace elements :)

Welcome to Warsaw ... this is perfectly normal , water pipes around the city are old & rusted .

Rust doesn't affect water like that. This is limescale, same you can find in the kettle. In the summer they clean hot-water boilers and pipes. We drink it day by day in small doses.

Brown limescale???

Thanks guys your replies made me chuckle. My friend here laughed at me and said "Welcome to Warsaw" too. I thought it was rust myself to be honest.

Re drinking the tap water, there seems to be this urban myth that you have to boil the water to make it drinkable. To kill any micro-organisms you'd need to boil it for four minutes or so, so I am assuming this is a hangover from the days when the water wasn't much good here. It is indeed very hard water, but I am used to that in the UK too as always lived in hard water areas.

I actually have a tap in my kitchen which is for filtered water but the filter needs changing - as is evidenced by the trail of limescale on the sink where it drips :)

The same thing happens in my place every now and then, pipes reconstruction somewhere or roadworks, it usually lasts for a day, few days max, you just need to turn the tap on from time to time to check if the waters is getting less "brown".. ( remember to wait a little bit before turning it off because the browny thing has to wash away first )

Yep it's all clear now :)

the filter does not filter calcium out considerably - though it does stop heavy metals they say

If it comes back again then it might be worth checking your anode rod hasn't corroded ( immersion ).
If your tank makes a lot of noise when heating, this could be an indication of sediment being disturbed.

When I moved to Poland after living in the UK I once tried tap water and was ill for a few days! That stuff kills!

No immersion tank, city water supply.

I can't say I've had any ill effects here jump_bunny :)

Well, hot water in Warszawa and Glasgow must be supplied by the same pipe, for it happened to me here too :)

Well wait long enough and cold water will be too, given all the rain over here these last few weeks ;)

In Elgin, thirty years ago, brown tap water was the norm. It is/was probably the main ingredient of Irn Bru.

It's because water chemistry differs a lot in different regions (of country, continent, globe) and your organism have to get used to it... most probably you will have stomachache in first few days, but then everything should be ok. The most important... even though you had stomachache after drinking tap water it doesn't necessarily mean that the water was bad (polluted).


Personally I don't know anyone who drink tap water and I'm thinking here about Poland as a whole... some people boil it, but most of us just buy mineral water in shops :P

I certainly do and it hasn't done me any harm in the 14 years I've been here.

I buy mineral water since the tap water is defininely niegazowane :)

niegazowana :-) but the water without gas is healthier, more neutral for your organism, especially recommended when you're drinking while exercising.

Duh, ty.

Oh I know but allow me one vice, please! :) (OK well maybe a couple!)

well in many rural areas (where I live for example) tap water is really drinkable, as well as in some bigger cities (I was told tap water in Częstochowa is very good) - but there are cities and areas in Poland where tap water should be avoided - the whole of Śląsk i guess, Wrocław, Warszawa and perhaps Kraków too, (I guess this is going be the same with Szczecin and Poznań) - the thing is many cities in Poland draw a considerable portion of water from running waters (rivers) - this is the case of Wrocław and Warszawa (but also a town of Brzeg) - (I guess noone in his good mind would try to drink water from Odra - the treatment of this water (filtering mostly) doesn't make it really drinkable - the only way would be to distill it - expensive also because you need to fill it with minerals before you let it into the pipe system - not very healthy drinking distilled water)

We have a fillter connected to the water supply... for drinking water. When the fillter is changed one gets to see what one might have ingested.

I understand that some bottled waters have too many salts.

Ive been to Poland 3 times, 2 of those times I stayed in an apartment and I drank the tap water on a regular basis...no big deal it tasted like water, in fact it tasted better than the stuff in London which is vile!