Clean Drinking Water at Home: How to Keep It Clean

Reading time: ~10 minutes

What is clean drinking water?

The government's Atlas Leefomgeving briefly describes clean water as water without toxic substances and without pathogens. That sounds absolute, but in practice clean is a matter of standards. Almost any water contains traces of something: lime, minerals, or a fraction of a substance from agriculture or industry. Clean means that these traces stay well below the limit at which they pose a risk.

That is why it is useful to keep three things apart. Safe water contains no bacteria or viruses that make you ill. Clean water also contains no chemical substances above the standard. And good water is a third layer: it is about taste, smell and hardness, and there is no legal requirement for that. This article is about the first two, with a look at the third. If you want to know exactly what is in your tap water and whether it is healthy, also read whether tap water is healthy.

Is drinking water in the Netherlands clean?

Yes. Dutch tap water is strictly and frequently checked. According to the RIVM (the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment), the Drinkwaterwet, the Drinkwaterbesluit and the Drinkwaterregeling have applied since 2011. These set the quality requirements, based on the European Drinking Water Directive, and oblige the ten water companies to check whether the water they supply meets them.

About 60% of our drinking water comes from groundwater according to the RIVM, the rest from surface water such as rivers. That surface water goes through a long purification process. Waternet, which supplies Amsterdam with water, uses nine steps: flocculation and settling, filtering through sand and gravel, about 90 days of natural purification in the dunes, sand filtration again, ozone, softening, activated carbon, slow sand filtration and finally a laboratory check that takes place several times a day.

Where your water comes from exactly and which route it takes differs by region. You can read about that in where our drinking water comes from. The key point here: the water that enters your meter cupboard is clean according to the law. So the question is not whether your water company does its job, but what happens on both sides of that meter cupboard.

Where does contamination in drinking water come from?

Contamination can arise in two places: at the source, before the water company pumps up the water, and in your own home, after the water has passed the meter cupboard. You have no influence over the first, but you do over the second.

At the source: substances that are increasingly hard to remove

The RIVM names agriculture, old soil contamination and built-up areas as risks for groundwater. Substances that households discharge themselves end up in surface water: medicine residues, pesticides, personal care products, flame retardants and nanoparticles. According to the RIVM, sewage treatment plants do not remove these well. If the quality of the river water falls below the standard, water companies sometimes temporarily stop taking it in.

Then there are PFAS, the so-called forever chemicals that hardly break down in nature. Water companies largely purify them away, but the discussion is about how far below the standard you want to go. You can see where the measurements in the Netherlands are highest on the PFAS map of the Netherlands.

In your own home: pipes, standing water and temperature

After the meter cupboard you are responsible for your pipes yourself. According to the RIVM, buildings from before 1960 may still have lead pipes. The standard for lead is 5 micrograms per litre, and in older buildings the water can exceed it. The RIVM advises having lead pipes replaced. If you are in doubt, read how to recognise and tackle lead in tap water.

The second risk is standing, lukewarm water. According to the RIVM, Legionella can grow in poorly maintained pipes, for example when cold water warms up. You run the risk not by drinking the water, but by breathing in the mist, in the shower for example. More on that in our piece on Legionella in tap water.

How long will we still have clean drinking water?

There will be no moment when dirty water suddenly flows from the tap. However, the RIVM has warned since March 2025 that the existing sources may no longer be enough after 2030, due to population growth and climate change. Drought, salinisation and warmer water also put the quality of the sources under pressure. The RIVM therefore calls for saving water and for keeping the sources clean, because heavier purification is expensive and uses a lot of energy.

How do you keep drinking water clean at home?

You drink less tap water than you think. According to the CBS (Statistics Netherlands), on average 2.6 litres of water per person per day go to drinking and cooking. Of all the water that enters your home, that is only a small part. That is exactly the part you want to have as clean as possible, and you can do a lot about it with a few habits.

• Let the cold tap run for a moment until the water feels cool if the water has stood still for a night or a holiday.
• Always drink and cook with water from the cold tap, because warm tap water picks up substances from pipes more easily.
• Have lead pipes in a house from before 1960 replaced instead of just flushing them.
• Clean the aerator of your tap a few times a year, because lime and dirt build up there.
• Replace a water filter on time, because a saturated filter holds back nothing and can itself become a source of bacterial growth.
• Follow a boil notice from your water company immediately and then boil your drinking water for three minutes.

That last one is rare, but it happens. According to the RIVM, a water company issues a boil notice when it finds E. coli or enterococci, for example after a pipe burst. Boiling is then necessary for water you drink, not for showering or washing up. What else you need to know is in what to do with a boil notice. How long you can store water afterwards, you can read in how long tap water stays good.

What does a water filter do for clean drinking water?

A water filter does not make unsafe water safe. That is the honest starting point. Dutch tap water is already microbiologically safe, and a carbon filter is made to remove substances from it, not to disinfect water. What a good filter does do is take the last step from clean to cleaner and better-tasting: it removes traces that fall below the standard but that you would rather not drink, and it takes away the chlorine taste.

There are roughly three types: a filter jug, a filter on the tap and a fixed filter under the sink. How they differ and which one best suits your situation, you can read on our page about the different types of water filters. Anyone who mainly wants to know which filter holds back the most substances will find the answer in what the healthiest water filter is.

The PureFilter Mineral+ is a fixed filter under the sink with five filter layers: a pre-filter, two layers of carbon fibre, Swedish Mineral Rock™ and a post-filter. Tested by Equinox Labs, an independent laboratory (2026), it filters all 40 tested chemical substances, from 75% to 99.97%. For PFAS the reduction is 83% to 85%, including PFOA and PFOS, more on that on our page about a water filter against PFAS. Chlorine is removed by 99.97%, so no more chlorine taste and no more chlorine smell. In the last filter step, Swedish Mineral Rock™ adds calcium, magnesium and potassium.

Important to know: the filter does not disinfect. It is made for Dutch tap water that is already safe, and makes that water better and tastier. You connect it yourself in about 10 minutes with a single water pump plier, as you can see in the guide to installing a water filter. Our entire range is at the filters for healthy tap water at home.

Six ways to get clean drinking water, compared

Not every method solves the same problem. Boiling kills bacteria but leaves chemical substances behind. A filter removes substances but does not disinfect. The table shows what each approach does and does not do.

If you want to compare further, you will find all methods for the home side by side in water purification at home: methods compared. What a litre of tap water really costs is in what a cubic metre of water costs. The difference between filtered and ordinary tap water you can read in what filtered water exactly is.

Our buying advice

If you live in a house with modern pipes and like your tap water, you need nothing except the habits above. If you want the traces of PFAS and chlorine out as much as possible, choose a fixed filter with activated carbon. At PureFilter we see that most questions are not about bacteria, but about taste and about PFAS. The filter lasts up to 12 months for 1 to 3 people and up to 6 months for 4 or more.

Clean drinking water without a tap: ditch, rain and emergencies

If the water fails, or you are somewhere without a tap, the question changes. It is then no longer about traces below the standard, but about water that can really be unsafe. Ditch water and rainwater can contain bacteria, parasites and chemical substances at the same time. Boiling deals with the first, a filter with the second, and for really contaminated water you need both.

An under-sink filter such as the PureFilter Mineral+ is not meant for that: it works on the water pressure of the mains and does not disinfect. For emergencies there are portable filters and gravity filters, combined with boiling. What to do when nothing comes out of the tap, you can read in no tap water: what to do, and how to build an emergency supply in a water filter for your emergency kit.

Frequently asked questions about clean drinking water

Conclusion

The Netherlands has this well organised: the tap water that enters your meter cupboard meets the Drinkwaterbesluit and is checked several times a day. Clean drinking water is therefore the standard here, not a luxury. The real questions lie at the edges: the sources are under pressure, and in your own home pipes, standing time and temperature determine whether the water stays clean all the way to your glass.

With a few habits you keep that last stretch under control. If you want to go a step further, a fixed filter removes the traces that fall below the standard and gives the water a fresher taste. The Voedingscentrum (the Netherlands Nutrition Centre) advises adults to drink at least 1.4 to 1.8 litres of fluid per day, and that is much easier when the water tastes good. How much you need, you can calculate with how much water you should drink per day. You can find more about us at purefilter.nl.