I have a bathroom that was hardly ever used. The house was repiped with copper about 16 years ago. Finally moved some tenants in and they are using this bathroom but they are complaining about rusty water coming out of the pipes (at first) in this bathroom. The problem is isolated to this bathroom. I flushed the tub, shower and vanity faucet before they moved in and thought that did the trick. A lot of nasty stuff flushed out... little pebbles (rust maybe) and brown water at first -- It takes a couple of minutes to fully clear. Another plumber friend really believes that there's some galvanized piping somewhere, but there is not. What do you think could be causing this? Does Los Angeles city water have debris like this that can collect? Could there be something lodged inside there or do I just need to give it some time to clear out? Should I just keep telling my tenants to be patient?

 

The way that I understand it is if there is one piece of steel touching any copper, it can cause a chemical reaction. You could be looking for a needle in a hay stack. I've seen it happen a few times. Can you ask a few neighbors just in case it has something to do with LA water?

 

If the debris was from the water supply I'd expect it to show up in other faucets as well.

 

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How long did the nasty flow last?

With one bathroom not used at all for months or years, some sediment could pile up at the pipe branch off to that bathroom, like snow left by the plow in the driveway of a vacant home and remaining there. Then when someone starts using that bathroom, the sediment comes out of the faucet almost all at once.

 

Really bad when I first turned the water on. Mixture of air and brown stuff spitting out initially. Then it took maybe a couple of minutes for the water to turn fully clear.

These pipes run down from the roof into this bathroom.