Do you bleach / santize your hot water tank?

fulltimedaniel wrote:
What kind of insane madness has struck this planet? What is this need to Sanitize everything?

Sanitizing your water heater is redundant on several levels.

Not true.

1. The water is replaced very quickly...usually one shower or two dish washing cycles.

If there is bacteria growing in the tank and the water system simply flushing it will not remove all the bacteria.


2 The water is HOT

The water temp (120 degrees) in a standard water heater is not hot enough to kill the bacteria, you need at least 130-140 degrees.


3 The water in most cases is taken out of city water systems which are heavily chlorinated enough to kill almost anything. (you can easily smell it and taste it)

? When do you ever "Sanitize" your home water heater??

This is totally different, in an RV people are getting water from a lot of different sources that are unknown as far as sanitation is concerned. How often do you turn off your home water heater and let it cool to ambient temperature? How often does the water get stagnant allowing bacteria growth? These bacteria grow best at warm temps below 120 degrees in stagnant water, this is one reason most plumbing codes specify you can't cap a water line and leave more than 6" of pipe not being used.

The more we continue to over-sanitize everything the less resistance our bodies system will have to fight off the normal everyday bugs that man has survived for millions of years.

This must be some kind of new disease....RV Foolishness Syndrome... (RVFS) Now we just need to figure out how to sanitize for that...

If you want to follow your own advice that is your right, I guess we could call that lack of knowledge syndrome(LOKS) or survival of the smartest(SOTS). But don't give advice to others that could possibly be harmful.

I am not just pulling this out of thin air there is a lot of info on this, I have 30+ years in the HVAC and plumbing trades and have been to quite a few seminars and training courses on bacterial and water contamination issues.

The chances are not high that someone will have these bacteria growing in their water systems, but why take the chance? We had two people in the next town over go to Las Vegas for their 60th anniversary they got Legionella from the water system at the hotel they stayed at, the wife was dead a week after coming home. They had stayed in a group of rooms that had not been rented for a while and Legionella had grown in the plumbing, they showered in the water and that was all it took.

So be informed and make your own choice.

https://www.cdc.gov/legionella/about/causes-transmission.html