Disinfecting Water Connections

Flapper wrote:
So many opinions, so here's one more:

The areas to think about are the ones that do not rapidly dry out, and continue to be moist/wet for longer periods. Things die quickly on dry surfaces. Quick bleaching does little, you need to let it soak for longer periods. For bibs, hose ends and hoses, a flushing with water will be more than adequate before you hook up.
But, your water system can sit stagnant for long periods. What it will grow will usually give the water an off or bad taste. At the very worst, you might get an upset stomach - but you'd remember drinking the "funky" water.
My Jayco manual recommends sanitizing when new, at the start of each season, or every 3 months of use.
Standard is 1/4 cup of bleach for every 15 gallons in your tank. Premix it with a gallon of water before pouring it in, to pre-dilute it. After your tank is full, open up each faucet (hot and cold) and tank drain point, and run until you smell the bleach water. Turn everything off and let sit for 4 hrs. Then drain everything, and flush system with fresh water as needed to remove bleach smell - may take a couple of tank fulls.
You can speed it up to a 1 hr wait time by doubling the bleach, but I've found an awful lot more flushing is needed. Make sure to flush hot/cold and drain points - forgetting one can leave a "pocket" of bleach water that can remix into the system. Won't hurt you, but may make everything smell bleach-like again.
You'll hear advice to not bleach the hot water heater - not true, things love growing in the warm water! And this level will not harm anything.
True, most city water has chlorine, but its concentration is very low, and it quickly disappears from water, so cannot be used to sanitize a system - ask anyone who owns a pool! It just prevents anything new from being introduced.
Finally - always make sure to use the white "RV/Marine" water hoses! While there is a lot of concern about any use of plastics from some people, regular garden hoses do not need to meet any standards for being "food safe", so you can be ingesting all sorts of nasty things. At least the white have been tested to meet some standards of safety. And again - a sip from a garden hose is different than getting all your daily water for days/weeks/months from the same hose. Save the garden hose for black tank flushing, etc!

PS - just saw the previous post about using 1 cup per 5 gallons - that is an extreme amount! The amount I gave gives you 50 PPM (part per million), which is about 20 times the amount in an average swimming pool. The higher amount will give 500 PPM, or 240 times the average pool! With that much, you would be moving into possible damage to heater cores, etc. So keep it low and slow!

X2 - We also sanitize the water connection at a campground when we hook up a hose to it. We have seen more than one of these get peed on by dogs in the campground. We started by using the bleach/water in a spray bottle but that was a pain as bleach in water dissipates within 24 hours and all that is left is the smell - and mixing a new bottle of bleach each time was a hassle. We contacted the Lysol company and asked if their disinfectant spray could be used for this porpose safely on water connections and they told us yes, as long as you then run water through the faucet to rinse it off before connecting the hose. And that is what we do now. We do drink the water from out tanks and also from the campground. I have a filter on the hose going into the RV and also a filter on the kitchen sink faucet.

It is not a question of being a germaphob, but common sense to avoid what can grow inside an enclosed water system that is only used on trips.