I would guess that you are right, and I would say that you could flush it out.

If you really wanted to be cautious, use bottled water for a week and let the stuff get flushed out by normal use.

Thanks Jake, I'll try flushing it out. We use bottled water for cooking anyway, but the smell is truly yucky when taking a shower and washing dishes.

I'm a little confused. Is it a faint smell, or is it a truly yucky smell?

Do you know what type of pipe it was?

My guess is that it will flush out, whatever it is. Give it a few days. You probably have an amount of it in your water heater now also that will take time to flush out.

The smell was really strong yesterday, but today it is fainter. I can still smell it though, it smells solvent-like, sort of like nail polish remover.

The replacement pipe is a plastic pvc pipe, the joint on the original pipe had worked loose and we had a quite a leak, which we didn't realize until we got a huge water bill.

The pipe is under our driveway, so we had to have the concrete drilled open and the pipe dug out. Everything has been filled in and the concrete re-poured, so I hope there is nothing wrong that would require undoing everything. I bet you are right though and it's in the water heater, that hadn't even occurred to me. Maybe we can drain the water heater if the smell is still there this weekend.

That's what I thought it was. You will be fine. It will flush out of the water heater and the pipes.

It's reasonable not to ingest it, so the bottled water seems like a reasonable precaution.

I think you will find that it is the same chemical that's in nail polish remover.

I just had pipes outside replaced yesterday, and it’s the same issue: smells like solvent or nail polish remover. Pretty gross. I just boiled water, and there was a powdery residue left in my pot. Should I have the plumber return and flush the water heater?

"It is not what goeth into the mouth that defilith a man, but that which comes out."