brown watery intitially in bathtub faucet

[Hippoharbor]

I moved into a rental house in November and have been noticing that, occasionally (?after raining) that when I initially turn on the bathtub faucet, brownish water runs out for the first few seconds, then clears. What accounts for that?

Thanks
Michelle

[kknyc]

Well, I can't tell you what it is. But it happens at our apartment too. Except that the water never starts to run clear. We end up with brown bath water. Needless to say, I haven't had many baths in this apartment. We asked our landlords about it (we're in their brownstone, they live on the bottom floors) and they said they have the same problem in their bath. When they bought the house, they had the water tested and it's just an accumulation of "minerals". My thinking is - well, is RUST a mineral, cause that's what I think it is! But I can't say for sure. It's just gross, that's all I know!

[Gena]

We had this in the dorms where I went to college in all the faucets. It was due to rust in the pipes. The campus health department always assured us that it was safe, but if it bothered us we should just run the water for a minute to clear the pipes. I remember that the guys in my dorm liked to mix different flavors of Kool-aid into the rust-water to see what color/flavor resulted. (These are the same guys who made a slip-n-slide in the hallway out of trash bags and vegetable oil.)

[CharmedOne]

We get that in our complex too. Ours is more orangey though. Yup, it's just rust from the old pipes. We just run it for a bit before we fill up the tub. I always make sure I filter the tap water if we're going to cook with it or drink it.

[ThreeofUs]

I'd agree it's probably rust - but remember that decomposing pipe material has a lot of heavy minerals in it. Sure, run the water to clear it out but you might also consider using a filter on your drinking water.

This happens at our house about once a week b/c our city pipes are about 100 years old.