Testing Drinking Water
Does anyone know where I can find Test strips to check my incoming water for bacteria? I want to do the Bleach gig to my lines but really want to check the water afterwards.
Forum Discussion
As noted, there is no simple test for bacteria. Test kits are for common swimming pool chemical balances. Most basic is ph (acid/base), and chlorine. Unless you are using gold mine run-off as a water source, the ph test is of no value for Rv'ing. Chlorine test kits measure from 1-10 parts per million, with 1-3 being the goal for a pool. City water never registers on the test strips - amount of chlorine is just too low. Ask any pool owner about what happens if they fill, but do not add chlorine - stinky swimming really fast! Sanitizing as posted above drives the level up to about 50 ppm, which kills everything in a few hours.
While RV tanks are a semi-sealed system, things like algae and bacteria can begin to grow, but it takes a pretty long time as there are few nutrients and it is dark. (As opposed to a pool that gets alls sorts of wind blown stuff in it, and gets full daylight).
The only test that you can do, without sending water out to a testing lab, is to smell it.
So, just sanitize - at least yearly, more often if you leave the same water in the tanks for weeks or months. Use the test strips if it makes you feel better about verifying that you have flushed all the sanitizing chlorine out of the system, but your nose works even better than the test strips in detecting small amounts.
While RV tanks are a semi-sealed system, things like algae and bacteria can begin to grow, but it takes a pretty long time as there are few nutrients and it is dark. (As opposed to a pool that gets alls sorts of wind blown stuff in it, and gets full daylight).
The only test that you can do, without sending water out to a testing lab, is to smell it.
So, just sanitize - at least yearly, more often if you leave the same water in the tanks for weeks or months. Use the test strips if it makes you feel better about verifying that you have flushed all the sanitizing chlorine out of the system, but your nose works even better than the test strips in detecting small amounts.
