Water Heater Vinegar Soak

[DCamp84]

Hey guys. I want to flush out the water heater tank before I start the season. Just got our first camper in march and our maiden voyage will be next week. Detwinterizing everything I noticed a bunch of sediment in the bottom of the water heater tank (suburban) and the annode rod was pretty deteriorated. Got a new annode rod and I'd like to flush the tank and try to clean it out as best I can as it looks like it's never been done (camper is a 2011). I've seen good results with the vinegar soak but everyone I saw was done with a winterizing kit which my camper doesn't have. So my question is how do I fill my tank with the vinegar. Can I hook up a hose to the intake side of my water pump and suck it up that way? Is it safe to run vinegar through the water pump with out hurting it? Sorry for the long winded question just wanted to be as clear as possible. TIA!!

[LLeopold]

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[DrewE]

Vinegar would not harm the water pump. All many of the winterizing kits do is put in valves so you can connect the suction side of the pump to an external hose rather than the water tank, so doing that manually is equivalent. You will, of course, need to disconnect the water tank or remove that hose or it won't be able to suction out of your container.

I would actually suggest putting in valves etc. so that you can do this without removing and replacing hoses, and you'd then have the winterizing setup ready. If you have a fill valve for the city water connection (as opposed to only a gravity fill port), you can also use the pump to fill the water tank from a container with the winterizing setup by opening that fill valve and setting the others to pump from the external source.