A taste diary.
A shared first impression.

WaterGrade helps you find restaurants in Florida’s Lake and Orange counties and describe the water you actually tasted. It is a separate app and a potential future sister to KitchenGrade.

What does 1–5 mean?

1 unpleasant · 2 below average · 3 okay · 4 good · 5 excellent. The displayed score is the arithmetic mean of current, active votes from verified accounts. Each account gets one editable vote per exact establishment ID. Different water types, serving vessels, dispensers, ice and temperatures can produce different experiences.

We show the count and observation dates. Fewer than five votes is labeled a small sample. Five or more still does not establish statistical reliability or a fair restaurant ranking. Date ranges are observer-entered sample dates, not lab certification dates.

Taste is not safety

Water that tastes good is not necessarily safe. Chlorine, sulfur, metallic or musty notes are personal sensory descriptions; they do not establish the cause or contamination. Consumer test strips can be imprecise and do not test for every hazard. We store their readings as entered, without pass/fail judgments, normal ranges or a safety score.

EPA recommends state-certified laboratories for independent drinking-water testing ↗.

KitchenGrade’s restaurant inspection letters concern a different subject and method. WaterGrade taste observations never change those letters, and the two scores are never combined. Restaurant cards show KitchenGrade’s separate, dated independent inspection grade when the exact public business identity matches. Letters with an arrow to ? describe qualified context; the current grade is unknown. Scope labels and highlighted notes explain limitations. Expand Grade meaning & official reports to read the basis, source date and official reports, or open the KitchenGrade grading guide. A missing record or unavailable provider is separate from an unknown grade.

Which water?

Water type means tap, filtered tap, bottled or Not sure. Served in means the glass, cup or bottle you drank from. Dispensed from means the faucet, fountain machine, Coke Freestyle or bottle it came from. These choices are independent; a glass can be filled from a fountain. Choose Not sure when you don’t know, and choose filtered tap only when it is known. Machines do not confirm filtration. Ice and temperature are separate.

For a glass with ice filled from a fountain, choose Served in: Glass, Dispensed from: Fountain machine and Ice: With ice. Water type can remain Not sure. No filtration is inferred from the machine or container.

Tasting notes can describe clean/neutral, crisp, flat, chlorine, sulfur/rotten egg, musty/mildew, earthy, metallic, mineral/chalky, salty, sweet, bitter, plastic or soda carryover.

Reviews and moderation

New and updated observations stay private in your account until a moderator approves them for public display and rating counts. Moderator accounts publish their own observations immediately and follow the same community rules. No synthetic reviews are published. No photos are accepted. Don’t include personal information, harassment, promotional spam, allegations or claims that water is safe/unsafe.

Verified users can report a public observation for private review. A moderator approves or hides submissions awaiting approval. Reported reviews remain public until hidden; dismissing their reports keeps them published. Hidden reviews return to the approval queue before publication. Hidden/deleted ratings do not count. Updates from other accounts return to review. You can delete your rating or account, and contact us to appeal.

Directory and distance

7,580 separate DBPR location licenses were copied from KitchenGrade’s October 5, 2026 public-record snapshot. This includes captured active Lake/Orange licenses and current-year inspection establishments. It is a frozen directory, not a live statewide feed. Separate license IDs remain separate, even at the same address. A missing business or a listing does not establish its operating status.

5,076 records have approximate Lake/Orange County address points or Census road-range locations; 2,504 have unknown distance. Distances are straight-line estimates, not entrances, travel routes or a mobile operation’s current position. Google Maps links search a public address; no private location is passed.

A five-digit ZIP search uses an approximate center of the distinct mapped public addresses in that ZIP. It is a search reference, not an official ZIP centroid or a restaurant’s location. Unmapped establishments still have unknown distance. Selecting Use my location replaces a ZIP-only search with nearby results after a successful location fix.

Florida DBPR public records ↗ · Census Geocoder ↗

Privacy and installation

Submitted search criteria and one last known device location are stored on this browser/device. Unsubmitted search text and review drafts are not stored. Use my location requests a single fix. A stale saved fix may be refreshed once when returning to nearby results, only with an existing location permission grant; no repeated prompts or continuous/background tracking. Forget location removes the saved fix. Coordinates are sent privately for sorting, never included in public responses or observations.

Search URLs preserve submitted text, filters and a rounded, roughly kilometre-scale distance reference. Copying a search URL shares that area and your search criteria. A pasted location link stays fixed until you choose Use my location. Restaurant Share links contain only the public restaurant ID, without your location or search criteria.

We use Vercel Web Analytics and sampled Speed Insights to understand app use and performance. Events use broad categories, never your email, identity, search words, rating content or GPS. Restaurant URLs are grouped without license IDs; URL parameters are removed. Vercel processes browser/device and approximate region information from ordinary network requests. Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control disable this collection. Private moderation and authentication callback pages are excluded; no advertising cookies or session replay are added.

Public responses exclude emails, private account identifiers and user location. Authentication, hosting, database and email providers process the information needed for the service, including ordinary network request metadata. Rate limits use keyed, short-lived hashes. Moderators see review content and reports, not a public identity.

Inspection badges request only the displayed public establishment IDs from KitchenGrade, without your cookies, search words, location or page referrer. Its hosting receives ordinary network metadata such as IP address. Grades are fetched again for a new result list, with no persistent grade cache or continuous polling. A changed business identity withholds the badge.

If you choose Google sign-in, Google supplies basic account information such as your email, name and profile image to authenticate your WaterGrade account. Neon processes and stores account identity and sessions. These details are private and are excluded from public ratings and analytics. Sign-in requests no access to your Gmail, Drive, contacts or other Google content. Email-code sign-in remains available. You can delete your WaterGrade account from My account.

Install using your browser’s Add to Home Screen / Install app option. Offline mode shows a reconnect page; it does not cache account data or queue submissions. Search and ratings require a connection.

A working name

WaterGrade is provisional. Broader trademark, common-law, state and app-store clearance is incomplete. Exact water-information brands and Louisiana utility report cards already use the name in other categories. No domain purchase or trademark clearance is claimed.