plastic taste in drinking water

Re: bleach thru WH , Yes, I did.

I ran a solution thru everything. After you drain the water heater, you will have a small amt. of water that will sit in the bottom of the tank . ( think of a water heater as a large thermos bottle , If a small amount of water freezes at the bottom of the tank , no damage will result because the almost empty tank will allow for expansion)
In the spring , I flush the remaining water out of the bottom of the water heater using a
water heater flushing wand. hooked up to a garden hose. Run the hose for a few minutes, flushing the tank out by placing the wand into the WH drain port.
Doing this step, replaces the remaining water in the bottom of the water heater with fresh water. This prevents stale water from being pumped thru the lines.
You can then open the bypass valves and fill the water heater normally , using your city water hookup.

When you sanitized the tank with bleach did you run that through all the lines and water heater?

I don't drink the water either so would not know the taste. We bring gallons of bottled water for coffee and cooking and cases of water for the fridge for drinking.

Just be careful as to the brand of glycol used, some products use recycled glycol. It doesn't seem to be a good idea if its recycled.

http://msdssearch.dow.com/PublishedLiteratureDOWCOM/dh_0045/0901b80380045140.pdf?filepath=/heattrans/pdfs/noreg/180-01469.pdf&fromPage=GetDoc

http://rvlife.com/techtipsrv-antifreeze-not-all-the-same/

Stop using the ethanol based anti-freeze and switch to the propylene glycol based stuff. No more odors and off-tasting water. Has other benefits too. Even better, stop putting antifreeze in the lines and blow air through instead.

Vulcan Rider wrote:

bobndot wrote:

After you re-winterize with the pink stuff , blow it back out after you put it thru and "winterized everything". There is no reason to leave it in the system at that point. You avoid bad taste that way.

I think this is good advice.

But in my case, I can't bring myself to drink water from the storage tank, especially since I am the 3rd owner and don't know what the two previous did.

All of my drinking water comes in plastic bottles.......and I recycle the empties.

Actually, I agree . We don't drink the water from our holding tank either and we are first owners. :) We also use bottled water and recycle as well.
The only way that I found to really clean out a fresh water tank is to cut a port in it and reach inside and clean it. I had access to the top of my water tank, so I was able to cut a hole and replace it will a marine deck plate to seal it . I was amazed at the crud that I got out of my tank.

X2 Buy purified water for drinking. Most grocery stores have purified water dispensers for less than 40c gallon. There are too many problems associated with public drinking water supplies. Municipal water treatment plants do not remove toxins from the water supply such as residual amounts of prescription drugs that end up in our public drinking water. It's a bit of a hassle but worth it. I reuse the plastic jugs 3 or 4 times and then replace with new as they do have a tendency to develop pinhole leaks. Also use heavy plastic water jugs that they sell and last much longer but are expensive. They are made of a plastic that does not leach anything into the water. Most of the water dispensers use reverse osmosis filters to remove 99.99% of the contaminants from the water. Filters used in RVs will not meet this standard although they may improve the TASTE of the water.

bobndot wrote:

After you re-winterize with the pink stuff , blow it back out after you put it thru and "winterized everything". There is no reason to leave it in the system at that point. You avoid bad taste that way.

I think this is good advice.

But in my case, I can't bring myself to drink water from the storage tank, especially since I am the 3rd owner and don't know what the two previous did.

All of my drinking water comes in plastic bottles.......and I recycle the empties.

After you clean and flush the entire system (more take a few times) using bleach , then baking soda to remove the chlorine taste. Allow each solution to sit and soak the water system, give it time to work.
After you re-winterize with the pink stuff , blow it back out after you put it thru and "winterized everything". There is no reason to leave it in the system at that point. You avoid bad taste that way.

We have not had a bad taste, when drinking from the tank, or campground water. Ours has a basic whole house filter, but we also fill a Brita pitcher to keep in the fridge, for drinking.

I can notice a slight different taste in the coffee, when using the city water hookup at various campgrounds. It has never been a bad taste, or plastic taste.

Jerry