Tag:man_made=water_tap

man_made = water_tap

Description

Publicly usable water tap

Group: man made

Used on these elements

Useful combination

drinking_water=* or amenity=drinking_water

How to map

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)^[1]. For non-potable water, the tag drinking_water=no is used.

Water taps can be activated by turning a handle or pressing a button or by some other method^[2] and one of their defining requirements is that users interact with them to start the flow of water ^[3]. 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` This 'bubbler' is also considered by some as water tap as it is activated by its user^[4]. 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.