Boil water notice lifted? How to flush your pipes, ice maker, and more
When the notice is lifted, run your cold taps for several minutes to push out the water that sat in your pipes, throw away any ice made during the notice, and replace the filter in your fridge and any faucet or under-sink filters. Run the dishwasher once empty. If your notice has its own instructions, and most do, those come first.
While the notice is still on
Go by the notice. It’s written for whatever the utility found, so it’ll tell you what the water is and isn’t safe for, and how long to boil it. The general rule is bottled or boiled water for anything that goes in your mouth. That means drinking, cooking, brushing teeth, making ice, and mixing baby formula. The notice will also say what it considers okay for dishes and bathing. Babies and small children who might swallow bath water are worth extra care.
Turn off the ice maker now, too. Otherwise you’ll be tossing more ice later.
Your notice beats this page. Utilities write each one for a specific problem, and if their instructions differ from anything here, do what they say.
Once it’s lifted
- Read the lift notice for flushing instructions. Some spell out how long to run the taps.
- Run every cold water tap in the house for several minutes. Kitchen, bathrooms, laundry sink, and the outside spigots you use for drinking or pets.
- Dump the ice bin. Then let the ice maker run through a few batches and throw those out too, since the line feeding it held water from during the notice.
- Run the fridge water dispenser for a few minutes to flush its line.
- Replace the fridge filter, and any under-sink, faucet, or whole-house filter. They were filtering possibly contaminated water the whole time.
- Run the dishwasher once with nothing in it.
What about the water heater?
A typical tank holds 40 or 50 gallons that sat there through the whole notice. Most lift notices say whether you need to do anything about it. Some advise flushing the tank or running the hot taps too, especially if your heater is set on the low side. If yours says to, run the hot taps the same way you did the cold.
If the notice says to drain and flush the tank and you’ve never done that before, here’s how to flush a water heater safely. Turn the power or gas off first, and never let an electric heater come back on until the tank is full again.
Water softeners and other equipment
A softener’s resin tank held water through the notice as well. Check the manual. Many can run a manual regeneration cycle, which is an easy way to push fresh water through it.
Anything else that stores water gets the same treatment. Think coffee makers with a reservoir, humidifiers, and pet water fountains. Empty them, rinse them, and refill them.
Why notices happen in the first place
Most boil water notices are precautions. Pressure in a water main drops during a break or a repair, and the utility can’t rule out that something got into the line until testing comes back clean. Severe storms can cause them too, when a main breaks or a treatment plant loses power. If the notice came after a storm, here’s what else to check on your plumbing.
Most of this takes half an hour. The ice maker and the dishwasher can run in the background for the rest of the day.