Old Houses, Lead and Water

To filter or not to filter...that is the question

Are you drinking old lead in your water?

And if you are, what can you do about it?

Village water is subject to rigorous testing by the expert group of specialists who make up the Lions Bay Public Works department, and there is definitively no measurable quantity of lead to be found in water that is delivered to Village homes.

However, any homes built in Canada before 1989 may indeed have copper plumbing that was soldered together with lead. And many Lions Bay houses fit in that category.

Back in February, Public Works Director of Operations Karl Buhr put out a notice that the Village would facilitate lead-testing in residential water for those Lions Bayers who chose to take part.

Essentially the Village's role was to raise awareness and make the paperwork and vials available for those who were interested in checking. (Background story HERE.) But the costs and the ferrying of water samples fell to individual residents who chose to take part.

The Watershed has since followed up with a number of homeowners in the Village who decided to do the testing, and the results were surprisingly varied.

Government standards for lead in water can be found HERE.

The government sets the acceptable limit for lead in drinking water at below 0.005 milligrams per litre (mg/L), so any number above that line is a concern. The lowest trace of lead that the lab can detect is .00005 mg/L. Essentially, these are the two ends of the measurement scale.

The measurements listed in the infographic came from nine homes located in the central part of the Village above the highway, principally from homes on Oceanview Road and Mountain Drive.

All the homes where testing took place were built before 1980, although several have been substantially renovated in the intervening years.

Two samples were taken for each faucet tested (some residents tested multiple faucets in their homes): one after the water had run three seconds and one after the water had run five minutes. Both samples were taken first thing in the morning, with an intent to measure lead found in the water that had been sitting in the pipes all night.

Of the eleven tests that were made available to The Watershed, three faucets tested above the acceptable lead content in the initial testing. One of the faucets tested was below measurable levels of lead before running the water.

Infrastructure Committee (IC) member Brian Ulrich was one of the residents who chose to test his home's water. He did so, he said, because he wasn't the home's original owner, and so wasn't sure whether his pipes had been soldered with lead in the past or not.

"With older homes, you just never really know in terms of renovations completed. What if a do-it-yourselfer owned the home in the past, and pulled an old roll of solder out of the toolbox to do a repair?"

The good news that resulted from the testing of local homes is that there was universal improvement in lead content after running the water. Thus, the easiest solution for concerned homeowners is to run their taps for five minutes every morning.

However, in an environment where water usage is occasionally restricted, the questions become more complex. There are over 500 homes in the Village. The volume of water wasted if each home ran their water for five minutes every morning is not a small amount.

When lead is found in a home's drinking water, some residents opt to replace the plumbing line leading from the municipal connection to the home. Ulrich says that contemporary water pipes usually take the form of a three-quarter or one-inch plastic lines. In this case, the replacement water-pipe is usually run from the municipal service to the home through a two-inch PVC pipe to protect it from kinks and ground-shifting. And since there is no copper pipe involved, there is no need for lead solder.

Another option is to install a carbon filtration system that filters any existing lead out of the water before it flows into your taps. These systems can be installed where the water enters the home, or under the kitchen sink.

Ulrich has decided to install an under-sink filter in his own home. There are a number of systems available with carbon filters rated for both three and five years available to home-owners. Ulrich has chosen the Waterdrop, which is available to purchase online. He cautions that these systems are very effective if maintained, but that homeowners do need to keep on top of changing the filters.

For more detail about Village water quality, check out the 2024 Annual Report on Drinking Water Quality, which can be found on the Village website.

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