How we dewinterize our travel trailer

I sanitize my heater also. I've had a bacteria build up in the heater and the water smells like ****. So I use bleach, poured into the drain hole until it starts to run out. Close it up, fill, run water through the water lines and taps.Leave for 24 hours, drain, rinse and good to go. I've also caught beaver fever from a private campground water supply, hence the sanitizing, unless we're on city water.

In 15 years of RVing, I've never sanitized my water heater. I just clean it our with the rinse wand tool.

I never use the hot water for cooking just because every hot water heater I've drained has been disgusting. I never had any specific concerns with lead, but that water has always seemed mighty dirty. I try to keep the water from our hot water heater on the outside of my body for very non-scientific reasons;)

Moved to Tech Issues forum from DIY.

I agree that there is little opportunity for lead to come from fittings in an RV or trailer. That said, I never use hot water for any consumption. More force of habit than anything else.

mgirardo wrote:

DrewE wrote:
Am I the only person who sometimes fills the tea kettle with hot tap water to reduce the time it takes for it to boil?

If you do, you shouldn't. This is from the CDC:

In all situations, drink or cook only with water that comes out of the tap cold. Water that comes out of the tap warm or hot can contain much higher levels of lead. Boiling this water will NOT reduce the amount of lead in your water

Taken from this page: http://www.cdc.gov/nceh/lead/tips/water.htm.

-Michael

That page only deals with the situation where you have some problems with lead in the water. In an RV, there's basically nothing in the plumbing system that would leach lead: not the water heater, and certainly not the PEX plumbing or fittings. Some brass fixtures do have a bit of lead in the brass, but at least my RV fixtures have practically no metal of any sort in them, being the lightest and cheapest they could get away with. Water flowing through a faucet has pretty much no chance of leaching lead anyhow since it's not sitting there.

Plumbing in modern houses likewise has little or no chance of lead contamination. Lead/tin solder has been essentially banned for use in potable water systems since 1986, so houses that are newer than twenty years old should have basically no lead in the plumbing. Older houses may or may not have lead/tin solder in copper plumbing.

DrewE wrote:
Am I the only person who sometimes fills the tea kettle with hot tap water to reduce the time it takes for it to boil?

If you do, you shouldn't. This is from the CDC:

In all situations, drink or cook only with water that comes out of the tap cold. Water that comes out of the tap warm or hot can contain much higher levels of lead. Boiling this water will NOT reduce the amount of lead in your water

Taken from this page: http://www.cdc.gov/nceh/lead/tips/water.htm.

-Michael

I like the idea of knocking down any funk that may be in there from winter storage, so it's good to know I'm not that much of a weirdo. I flush the water heater then sanitize it with bleach and will keep doing it that way because it makes me happy;)

I like to sanitize my whole plumbing system, not just selected parts.

I sanitize the entire water system, hot water heater included. I can't think of any good reason not to do so. It sometimes means the first shower or two has a bit more chlorine than usual, even with a decently long rinse cycle through the heater.

Am I the only person who sometimes fills the tea kettle with hot tap water to reduce the time it takes for it to boil?