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
ro_sie wrote:
I guess what everyone is missing here is not the water quality as it comes from the campground, but it is the water lines in the rv. they are dark inside and never really dry because you turn them off at the faucet and at the incoming site, so bacteria builds up in those pipes. If its all the same to you folks, I don't want to drink that.
What I don't understand is the common use of exterior inline filters that contain carbon to remove chlorine which leaves all the lines inside your RV unprotected. Filters do not remove 100 percent of microorganisms and in addition, just because a municipal water system has chlorine in it does not mean it will have zero biological contaminants in it by the time you use it at a CG. Chlorine levels dissipate over time and distance and can be low to nothing at a CG as the bio-mass in the photo I posted above demonstrates. Then when you go home and your RV sits for weeks until the next trip, "stuff" can multiply inside your lines. If you don't like chlorine, use a point-of-use filter.
Another point is that getting a filter with KDF or silver in it is only there to prevent bacterial growth within the filter media and is not there to kill anything passing through it. About all exterior inline filters are good for is for sediment removal and do not have a very low micron rating.
Drinking water quality and the selection and use of filtration is a very complex field and not many RV-ers really understand it very well. For RV-ers that travel around a lot to unfamiliar CGs, that further complicates things. Doulton has a little bit of info. for RV-ers here but it only scratches the surface.
