Above is a picture of our gently used but new to us water crock.  Michelle and I bought the crock and stand off craigslist a month or so ago and are super excited about it.  The glass water jug is a carboy from a local homebrewing store.  I’m really happy with this purchase.  We’ve been getting spring water from the Fredrick Miller spring in Eden Prairie to use as our drinking water, but this kicks it up a notch.  We were using gallon sized plastic water jugs that we kept in our fridge, but the water crock is significantly better in a couple ways.  First off, it’s a 5 gallon jug, which is bigger than we were using before, so we’re not making as many trips back and forth.  It’s not in the fridge anymore, so we’ve gained some of our fridge space back (before the gallon jugs we used Brita or Pur pitcher style filters).  While it could be placebo, I find the water to taste better.  The spring water tastes significantly better than tap water, and we found the water in the plastic jugs had a mild plastic taste after we switched mostly to glass.

The biggest advantage, obviously, is the health improvements to be gained.  The quality of the spring water is far beyond that of the tap water.  We’re not ingesting the fluoride found in Minneapolis, which is huge.  Given that it comes from a spring, there’s a lower chance of ingesting pesticides, prescription drugs, etc. which are in surface water.  A couple of weeks ago when all the water smelled like fish, ours still tasted fine.  We also aren’t ingesting any plastic from our drinking water which we would be if we were drinking bottled water or water from the plastic pitchers.  Even though you can get BPA free plastic jugs, I still feel more comfortable with glass.

We do have a couple improvements to make though.  The spigot is still plastic and the bungs are some sort of rubber or plastic.  Ideally, we’d like to switch them out with non-plastic alternatives, but for now we are really happy with the reduction in plastic in our drinking water.