Recommendations for cleaning potable water tank

Jms

How do folks keep their potable water tank clean and safe? Do you run some water with a little bleach through it a couple of times a year? I do that with my reverse osmosis tank at home. Seems like it would be a good idea to flush and sterilize the tank periodically. Thoughts?

TomD

Yep. A couple of bleach flushes each season has worked for me.

Sharon_is_SAM

The TaB 11 gallon fresh tank receipe Is: pour in a gallon of water with a 1/4 cup (or less) of bleach, then fill up the rest of your tank with water. Let it sit a while, then thoroughly rinse until no further bleach smell. Some people use vinegar and others use a commercial product. Once a season should suffice if you are filling your tank with chlorinated water.

Jms

Great! Thanks TomD and Sharon_is_SAM for the suggestions.

Somemedic

Cheap gallon of dollar store bleach. A cup or 2 in the tank with the tank 3/4 of the way full. Then drive the camper down the roughest road you know about. Open up the drain when you get home and flush according

WilliamA

Not to be outdone by all of the good suggestions here, but I do the bleach bath ( as Sharon_is_sam said, with= <1/4 cup of bleach) , fill the tank, but then run the faucet and shower hose to circulate bleach water into all the lines, THEN let it sit for a few hours before dumping and rinse.
Sharon_is_Sam,
Chlorinated water? BWAAAAAAHHHHH! Out here in cow-country, the well water comes pre-nitrated after filtering down to the well through the cow pasture. Mmmmmm....Tasty.....

WilliamA

Sharon_is_SAM

@WilliamA, I was raised rurally and prefer good well water. Well, maybe not if exposed to cow dung. However, I have many memories of the well pump breaking down and my father’s colorful response. Don’t miss that😜

I agree about running the bleach water through your lines and letting it do it’s magic. Pays to be thorough. There was a couple of TaBs over on the TaB forum that reported what sounded like algae growth that occluded their pump! They used a lot of water flushing that mess. Can’t be too careful.

WilliamA

Sharon,
We have good water here from the well and I too prefer it to city, but we wrestle with nitrates from fertilizer. I'm pretty retentive about semi-annual testing of the well and haven't had issues, but some of the neighbors do have problems. Old house, old cast-iron wells. That and testing the basement in our farmhouse for radon is just good housekeeping.

On topic, it takes surprisingly little time to build algae to a critical concentration. Much easier to just keep it from getting a foothold. Let's not forget that draining the system won't prevent algae and other nasties from setting up a household in the water system. It will grow well in the damp closed up system just fine, waiting for us to fill the tank so it can really take off.

WilliamA