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Does Brisbane Use Chlorine or Chloramine?
Both, in that order. Seqwater, South East Queensland’s bulk water supplier, disinfects with chlorine at its treatment plants and then adds chloramine before the water is released into the SEQ Water Grid. So the disinfectant still in the water at a Brisbane tap or shower is chloramine, which is chlorine combined with ammonia.
What Seqwater adds before the water reaches you
Seqwater’s own description is short. Chlorine goes in at the treatment plant, a step it calls disinfection. Then, before the water enters the grid, chloramine is added to keep the water disinfected as it travels through the network to homes and businesses. Seqwater calls that second step secondary disinfection.
This year Seqwater upgraded treatment at its Mount Crosby, North Pine and Beaudesert plants, with the enhanced process scheduled from mid-August 2026. The main change is a small rise in pH, from about 7.8 to about 8.4. Seqwater’s reason: a higher pH helps hold the concentration of chloramine in the water for longer on its way through the network.
Why chloramine behaves differently in a hot shower
Free chlorine is unstable in water and leaves it readily, which is why a hot shower in a chlorinated city can smell like a swimming pool. Chloramine is chosen for the opposite reason. NHMRC’s Australian Drinking Water Guidelines give its much greater persistence as the main reason utilities use it, and describe monochloramine as the most stable form, with the lowest tastes and odours.
In a Brisbane shower, that means less of the disinfectant ends up in the steam and more of it stays in the water running over you. A Brisbane shower rarely gives itself away by smell, even with the chloramine right there in the water. The chemistry in full is on chloramine and vitamin C.
How hard is Brisbane’s water?
Moderately hard. Brisbane and Ipswich sit at about 100 mg/L on What’s actually in your water, where the postcode lookup gives the figure and the disinfectant for your own suburb.
Hardness and disinfectant are two separate things in the same water. The disinfectant is the one vitamin C acts on.
One grid from Ipswich to Moreton Bay
Seqwater’s treatment changes cover communities in Ipswich, Brisbane, Logan, Moreton Bay and some parts of the Scenic Rim. In the Scenic Rim, it names Beaudesert, Warrill View and Peak Crossing as the communities connected to the grid.
Your tap itself is looked after by a water service provider: Urban Utilities, Logan Water or Unitywater, depending on where you live. Seqwater runs the upgrade in partnership with all three. Because the chloramine goes in before the water enters the grid, it travels with the supply to every one of those communities.
What vitamin C does to chloramine
Vitamin C reacts with both forms. It gives electrons to free chlorine and to chloramine and turns both into chloride, the same ion found in table salt. That reaction is what every Suhae shower filter cartridge is built around.
Each Vita Refill holds 25,000mg of vitamin C. KEWI certificate IW-230133 records 99.9% chlorine removal, with no chlorine detected at any of six sample points between 1,000 and 6,000 litres.
Suhae Radiance puts the cartridge and the head in one unit, fits a standard shower fitting and installs in about 2 minutes with no tools. A replacement Vita Refill is AUD $29.90 in any of ten scents and runs two to three months, depending on how much the household showers.
Brisbane’s water leaves the plant carrying chloramine on purpose, and it is still there at the shower head. A Suhae shower filter deals with it at that last step.
