Advice for a family renting via estate agents, who have had no drinking water for nearly two weeks.

Mrsn

oystercatcher said:

I thought you weren't supposed to feed babies bottled or filtered water either as the chemical balance can be wrong so if I was the OP I would be making a big fuss. 

This is definitely the advice I remember too from having my babies a few years ago. If it was just OP and his partner I could understand the suck it up attitude but with kids and especially tiny ones I’d be the same as the OP

greensalad

Torry_Quine said:

It never crossed my mind that the bathroom water isn't drinkable. I've certainly never been ill when I've drunk it.

It's less common now but lots of older houses do still have it. I was told by my Mum never to drink out of the hot tap at our house precisely for that reason. Legionnaire's disease is what people are usually afraid of. 

It sounds to me like OP is fine, but particularly if you have separate hot and cold taps in an old house you shouldn't drink the water. 

Torry_Quine

greensalad said:

Torry_Quine said:

It never crossed my mind that the bathroom water isn't drinkable. I've certainly never been ill when I've drunk it.

It's less common now but lots of older houses do still have it. I was told by my Mum never to drink out of the hot tap at our house precisely for that reason. Legionnaire's disease is what people are usually afraid of. 

It sounds to me like OP is fine, but particularly if you have separate hot and cold taps in an old house you shouldn't drink the water. 

I was always told not to drink from the hot tap. I suppose it depends on what is old, my house is 100 years old.

TadleyBaggie

I know for a fact that only our kitchen tap is fed from the mains, all other cold connections are from the cold tank in the loft. It maybe due to the low water pressure in the area.

I would never drink from the bathroom cold taps.

lookstraightahead

saajan_12 said:

TG_2021 said:

caprikid1 said:

So you have one tap not working correctly and you want compensation for that ? Really.

After two weeks, yes really!
Out of the two taps we have, the Kitchen one is not working correctly and we were told the bathroom one was not suitable to drink from. And when you have a baby and a four year old in this heat it isn't an ideal situation having a cold drinkable tap that isn't working. Anyway, thanks for well thought out reply though, it really helped me a lot.

Remember three key points:
1. you're not entitled to a perfect house, just a house with normal issues that are repaired in a reasonable time. So some of that 2 weeks will be part of the reasonable time they are allowed; granted they are taking longer, but so far maybe an extra 1 week? 

2. The claim would be because you don't have drinking water - but you may have in the bathoom. Being told you don't doesn't mean you actually dont. Similar to if you told the LL / bank / someone that you'd be late paying but then ended up paying on time, they can't charge late fees / interest just because of your (non binding) statement. 
So maybe check out how the plumbing is set up and get an informal opinion whether the bathroom tap would be suitable for drinking. 

3. What are your actual costs as a result - you'd be making a trip to buy groceries anyway, so no additional time. Filtered water sold in bottles costs pennies. 

If you've been told by your landlord that the water isn't suitable, here's one thing to remember. You take the landlords word for it. Being told you actually don't means the landlord is lying if you actually do. Why on earth should you check how the plumbing is set up - the landlord should know that.

if the water costs pennies, the landlord could bring it round.

the landlord has admitted there is no drinking water. There is a duty of care there.

one of the benefits of renting is that a tenant is not responsible for these things. The landlord obviously doesn't care.

I would be asking for water from the landlords taps.

Sazzy1253

As a health visitor the advice from the nhs is that  we don’t advise that children under 1 drink bottled water. It generally contains too much sodium and sulphate. There is also too much of a contamination risk with using the hot water tap as you don’t know how long it’s been in the pipes etc 

elsien

You don’t need to check the pipe work into the loft to see if the bathroom water is mains fed. Just turn off the main water supply and turn the cold tap on.
If it’s from a tank, it’ll keep running for a lot longer than the minute or so a mains fed tap will keep going for. 

unforeseen

If you've been told by your landlord that the water isn't suitable, here's one thing to remember. You take the landlords word for it. 

And the landlords words were "I don't think so". In other words they were not sure. That is the point at which you make your own checks. 

rach_k

Surely the person to ask about drinking from the cold water tap in the bathroom would be the plumber who came round initially?  He probably assumed you would use it so didn't need to specifically tell you it's okay... otherwise, he would have advised you against drinking from taps that might not be safe.  No normal plumber is going to tell a family that their only source of drinking water can't be used and not suggest an alternative, or do a temporary fix.  Our plumber would just fit a random tap from his van if we needed it, but it sounds like you don't.  

lookstraightahead

unforeseen said:

If you've been told by your landlord that the water isn't suitable, here's one thing to remember. You take the landlords word for it. 

And the landlords words were "I don't think so". In other words they were not sure. That is the point at which you make your own checks. 

This is the point the landlord checks. What if the question was about the safety of the electricity?

as we both probably understand, the landlord here doesn't want to say yes as onus is then on the landlord. Tough really, as it is their responsibility to know how the house works.

a landlord can't have it both ways.

appalling behaviour by the landlord.