Clean Water Heater

I've seen home water heaters where the hot water smelled like rotten eggs. When the anode rod is removed the rotten smell goes away.

We had a nasty rotten egg odor coming from our hot water tank. I did some research and between all the advice I found I devised my own method that worked. Pulled out the drain plug and cleaned it thoroughly. Got our pump up garden sprayer and put in a mixture of 1 part vinegar to 2 parts water. Inserted the plastic spray wand and squirted in all directions. I also removed the nozzle tip so the liquid sprayed more to the sides, rather than straight ahead. While spraying the liquid will run out the drain where the sprayer is inserted, so you'll get flowing out. After using about a gallon of the liquid I let it set for an hour or so then got the hose with aRV water tank cleaning wand. This did remove the vinegar odor and reached up and all the tank. You will probably get wet!
And that's it! Replace the plug turn the bypass to open to the heater, run some through and you should be good to go. Or at least we were.
Hope this helps.

Thanks, This looks like the easiest way if RV has no OEM or add-on winterizing setup.

Dusty R wrote:

Bordercollie wrote:
Don't have a winterizing kit, live in SoCal. Want to know if I can fill hot water tank with vinegar/water solution by removing pressure relief valve and filling though the orifice.

I would think you could do that as long as there is a way for air to get out as you fill with vinegar/water.

I think that's the easiest thing for you to do too. After all, to change a bad PR valve you would unscrew it and replace it.

you can take the safety valve off, but its put in there very tight.

Here's one unorthodox method that might work (I haven't tried it, but it sounds good on paper). It won't work if you have a check valve on the water heater output, which I think some do for some winterizing setups...but without a winterizing setup I don't think you'd have a check valve there:

Fill water heater tank normally, shut off water to RV, and make sure the water pump is off.

Open the kitchen sink hot water tap (nothing much should come out, of course).

Assuming you have access, disconnect the hot wate flex host from the kitchen sink faucet and dunk it in a pail or pot of your vinegar solution. If you don't have access to do that, it ought to work by rigging up a hose from the faucet to the pail or whatever and opening the hot tap.

Remove the drain plug from the water heater. The water in it drains out, and pulls in the vinegar solution via syphonic action. Replace the plug when appropriate and fill up the water heater to the top with water in the usual way--of course, you need to replace the faucet hose etc. before filling.

There's of course nothing magical about the kitchen sink vs. other hot water taps; it's just more likely to be accessible and, at least on my RV, is closest to the water heater. Showers might give trouble due to vacuum breakers.

Bordercollie wrote:
Don't have a winterizing kit, live in SoCal. Want to know if I can fill hot water tank with vinegar/water solution by removing pressure relief valve and filling though the orifice.

I would think you could do that as long as there is a way for air to get out as you fill with vinegar/water.

Don't have a winterizing kit, live in SoCal. Want to know if I can fill hot water tank with vinegar/water solution by removing pressure relief valve and filling though the orifice.

Drain the water heater. Hook up your winterizing kit, or flip valves, or however you winterize. Do not put the the water heater into bypass. Just simply use a gallon gun of vinegar and pump 8nto your water heater tank , same as you winterize, only it's not in bypass. Pump the vinegar, let it sit, eventually you will drain the water heater from the vinegar, then flush everything with fresh water to remove the vinegar.