Tag:man_made=water_tap

A water tap is a man-made construction providing water, supplied by water distribution system (unlike in case of man_made=water_well, where groundwater may be used directly). The tag man_made=water_tap is used for publicly usable water taps, such as those in cities and graveyards.

There are two approaches for tagging that the water from such a public tap is potable (safe for human consumption): one approach is to combine the tag man_made=water_tap with amenity=drinking_water, the other is to add drinking_water=yes. Some mappers consider both variants to be interchangeable in the case of taps, others make a distinction where the tag amenity=drinking_water is to be used when the tap's main function is to provide drinking water (e.g. for hikers or cyclists) and the tag drinking_water=yes is preferred when the tap happens to provide drinking water but that is not its main function (e.g. for watering plants). For non-potable water, the tag drinking_water=no is used.

The tag should not be used to tag fire hydrants, for which a special emergency=fire_hydrant tag is available.

Water taps can be activated by turning a handle or pressing a button or by some other method and one of their defining requirements is that users interact with them to start the flow of water . A man_made=drinking_fountain providing a tiny upward jet of water does not need to be tagged as a water tap nor does a amenity=shower.

Related tags

• man_made=water_well A man made excavation in the ground to gain water from an aquifer.
• man_made=drinking_fountain Provides a small jet of drinking water.
• natural=spring Water flowing out of the ground. May have a fountain built around it (see Roman Bath in Bath, U.K).

Examples

Picture	Tags
	man_made=water_tap drinking_water=yes amenity=drinking_water wikimedia_commons=File:Faucets_水龍頭_-_panoramio.jpg public press button water tap, Florence, Italy
	man_made=water_tap drinking_water=no wikimedia_commons=File:Bristol (UK), Brunel's ss Great Britain -- 2013 -- 1606.jpg Not all water taps provide drinking water. It is useful to add drinking_water=no or amenity=drinking_water to them.
	man_made=water_tap fountain=drinking (note that this is controversial! It is quite awkward to contort yourself to "drink directly" from this. Better is to draw water from this tap into your hydration bottle, then drink from that. See https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/tagging/2022-October/thread.html#65682 and https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Talk:Tag:man_made%3Dwater_tap#Adding_the_tag_fountain-drinking for discussion of that) amenity=drinking_water drinking_water=yes drinking_water:legal=yes wikimedia_commons=File:Water flowing from drinking water tap.jpg [1]
	man_made=water_tap This is controversial. fountain=bubbler This is controversial. drinking_water=yes amenity=drinking_water wikimedia_commons=File:Bubbler.jpg.jpg This 'bubbler' is also considered by some as water tap as it is activated by its user. This is controversial as the 'tap' component is a valve that also occurs in amenity=shower and there is no suggestion that showers need to be mapped as a 'tap'. Some consider this would be better mapped as man_made=drinking_fountain particularly as 'bubbler' is not British English and only used in some locations none of which are entire countries.

• 
  public press button/Delay Action Watersaving water tap, at the amenity=sanitary_dump_station of Air de Valuéjols, France.
• 
  Classic public water tap, Le Mont-Saint-Michel, France. For working one additional tags fitting it would be fountain=drinking and amenity=drinking_water. Stevea says yes to amenity=drinking_water but no to fountain=drinking because of the downward-pointing spout. If there were such a tag as water_fixture=hose_bib it would apply here. (I'm trying to share my knowledge of English about these things).
• 
  Plastic taps, widely used in India for their low cost.
• 
  Old metal taps were often part of decoration as this one in Fužine castle backyard, Slovenia.

Similar features

Picture	Tags
	amenity=fountain
	man_made=drinking_fountain amenity=drinking_water

Drinking water signs

• 
  ISO 7010 sign E015
• 
  France
• 
  Belarus
• 
  Ukraine
• 
  Russia
• 
  Slovenia
• 
  United States
• 
  United States (Ohio)

Not drinking water signs

• 
  ISO 7010 sign P005
• 
  Canada (Québec)
• 
  Germany
• 
• 
  United States (California)

Rendering

Possible rendering:

See also

• Proposal page
• Standpipe (street) on Wikipedia
• emergency=fire_hydrant
• amenity=water_point -for 'large amounts' of water e.g. to a caravan.
• waterway=water_point - for 'large amounts' of water to a boat.
• amenity=drinking_water - non specific other than 'drinking'. Could be a tap or something else.
• handle=* - specify type of handle used to activate/regulate water flow
• fountain=bottle_refill - Indicates whether a water bottle can easily be filled.