Horrible Taste--New Cold Water Supply Piping?

[arkitekton]

I live in a rented house.
My landlord lives in the other house on the property.
Both houses are supplied by a single well.
The water from the well smells strongly of sulphur.
Each house has its own cold water supply that branches off from the well.

Two weeks ago the cold water supply running from the well to my rental house had to be entirely replaced. Once it was replaced, the sulphur smell disappeared, only to be replaced by this foul smell and taste, that I can only describe as the smell and taste of really cheap plastic.

I asked the landlord, a longtime plumber who always goes cheap, what kind of new piping he'd used in the buried portion of the supply line, which runs about two hundred feet from the basement of his house to my house. He was evasive. I asked, "Did you use PEX?" He replied, "something like that". I told him about the water's hideous taste, and he said "that'll go away over time as the pipe seals itself".

I've never heard that one before, and it's two weeks later and the water still tastes like crap, although it smells a little better, but still not good. I installed cold water supply lines twenty years ago and after a couple of hundred gallons ran through the pipes the water always tasted normal. The water here before, while sulphurous, was tolerable. I mean, if you live in the country, you learn to tolerate it. But this current water is undrinkable. Oddly, the water no longer smells of sulphur. I also asked the landlord if he had changed the water's filter system. He said no, he had not.

Any guesses as to what kind of piping the landlord used, or what could be contributing to the awful taste?

[phishfood]

Garden hose, maybe?

[arkitekton]

Ouch. He did go to the trouble--he claimed--of running the supply piping through a 4" diameter sleeve where the line was buried. If that's aqccurate that's a whole lot of trouble to go to bury garden hose. Besides, even bad plumbers have pride and he had a well-known local guy do the excavating. Tough to run garden hose when someone's likely to see you.

Seriously, though, I don't remember garden hose water tasting like this. Hose water has a funny taste, but it's a distinctive, memorable taste. The way I remember it, it didn't have that godawful artificial taste this water does.

Let me put on my detective hat, so here's a thought--the pipe he used would have to be something that could pass for supply piping, right? The kind of thing a guy would use who thinks all that stuff about certain piping causing nasty chemicals to leach into drinking water is nonsense. If he can't see it, it doesn't exist. What would that guy use? He's retired, so he doesn't have 200' of 2" ABS lying around, so it's not that, though the installer might have wanted to get rid of stuff left over from another job. What about solvent? Could the installer have been sloppy with the solvent--any idea what pipe dope tastes like?

Originally Posted by phishfood

Garden hose, maybe?

[EricS]

Definitely was not pex. I would guess PVC or CPVC both will taste like plastic but can get very bad if lots of extra glue was used. Used to get complaints about this from new construction with cpvc quite a bit. Usually it will go away after a while.

[LiQuId]

cpvc sounds like a good culprit, primed and glued its definatelly got a flavour to it.