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winger999's avatar
winger999
Explorer
Jun 29, 2015

Water!

How often do you clean your water tank? We recently sold our hybrid which had a 15 gallon tank with a 4 gallon hot water tank. I would mix the cleaner (some combo my wife puts together with bleach and water) with a full tank, drain, fill with clean water, and drain again.

Now I have a camper with a 62 gallon fresh water tank and I hate to fill, drain, fill, drain. That is a LOT of water to drain onto the ground. While my grass grows great there, I feel bad wasting that much water.

What do the rest of you do?
  • At the start of the season I add ¼ cup of beach to 15 gallons of water and dump it in the fresh water tank. I open the facets to until I can smell the bleach. This includes the hot water heater.

    Two days later, I drain the fresh water tank, refill with fresh water, and flush the facets. All this also help flush the residual antifreeze that always seems to remain in the lines. This is what the TT manual recommends.

    I do drain the water tank between trips; including the hot water heater because it is really funky smelling, but I only “sanitize” the system at the start of the season. We usually stay at State Parks with only electric hook ups, so we haul 15 to 20 gallons of fresh water and refill as needed from the campground supply. We also have had no problems with campground water hook ups when they were available.

    Some people are sensitive to their water supply, but the DW and I have grown up on iron rich Indiana well water or at times chlorinated and fluorinated city water, so TT water is no big issue to us. Besides, I do not flush my home hot water tank or purge my water softener tanks when I return from a several weeks trip and who know what lurks in them?
  • eichacsj wrote:
    Fresh water? Never. What would I clean out? When I fill it I use potable water and I drain it when I am heading home.


    Even when drained some water remains. Over time, that can grow mold.
    I hope you don't actually drink the water from the tank.
    If you do, you REALLY need to sanatize it periodically.
  • Thanks for the help. We were sanitizing before every trip, no big deal with a small water tank. Since I sanitized in the spring before our first trip, I will call it good for the season until winterizing in the fall.

    Thanks,
    Steve
  • We sanitize just once during Spring time prep for the upcoming camping season using 1/4 cup of bleach for every 15 gallons. Our FW tank can hold over 100 gallons that we fill with chlorinated city water if at all possible. If water is suspect where we might camp we fill up at home as we have experienced poor water quality on a few occasions.
  • Fresh water? Never. What would I clean out? When I fill it I use potable water and I drain it when I am heading home.
  • winger999 wrote:
    How often do you clean your water tank?


    Once at the beginning of the season I disinfect the trailer's entire water system including the FW holding tank with a bleach mixture (about 1/3 cup in a gallon of water for every 15 gals tank capacity), fill the tank with water, run the system, let it sit overnight, then drain and flush it out the next day. Thereafter the tank always has some water in it, the water system remains pressurized for the entire season, and I don't empty it at all until I winterize.