Water tank

buckland

buckland

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Jul 26, 2011
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3,192
Location
New England
Now that I have the camper on full time I was wondering as to how folks keep the water tank clean. Should one drain it while in-between trips and let it dry out or should one keep in a small amount of bleached water? Don't want mold to start and especially I want the spring water I put in to taste like the water I put in.
TIA
 
I drain it when I get home from a trip, and I leave the drain fitting open so when I drive around town it gets almost all the water out. I leave the top hatch loose and eventually the tank gets dry. When I re-fill for a trip I first flush the tank completely with new water and then fill. A little baking soda helps too. Never had a problem. Keeping the drapes/shades closed so the camper is as dark as possible when sitting also helps. You need sunlight to make things grow.
 
Thanks. I do drain and have a feeling all is well but not being able to see the tank w/o taking the box apart I wanted to hear from learned others on their experience. Baking soda sound benign enough ...how much you use for a fill?
 
I’m interested as well hearing what others do because I’m never that sure if how I do it is the best way.

I always empty the tank on the last day of camping while headed home. Then I park on a slope at home and leave the drain valve open until no more water is draining out. But I’m not confident the tank ever gets “dry” and that concerns me somewhat.

Because of this I only use the water in the tank for cleaning and boiling for cooking. I also do the bleach thing at least once a year. However I have to say that when I have tasted the water right out of the faucet, I’ve never noticed an off taste. If push came to shove, I would drink it. But I always bring about 5 or more extra gallons to drink anyway.

Btw: winterizing is not an issue because it does not get cold enough at home to freeze.

Anyway looking forward to hearing what others do.

Ron
 
Just a small amount of baking soda for my 18 gallon tank, half a teaspoon. This will eliminate tastes that can come from the plastic, or from the fill hose that you use. You could use bleach once per year too, but it takes several rinses to get all the bleach out. I run water through the fill hose for a few minutes before I fill the tank because water can sit in the hose and transfer that particular taste to the water in the tank.

My DIY water tank has a 4" round access hatch, so I can see into all of it and actually get my arm and hand in there to clean it if I ever had to, but it has stayed nice and clean for about 4-5 years. The water lines are another source of something funky growing. My Westfalia van had this problem. I designed my truck camper so water always drains back into the tank when I turn the faucet/pump off. I made sure I had no sags in the water line that would hold water, it all drains out. When I drain the tank the water drains out of the pump as well. I also drink the water and have never had gastrointestinal madness from it.
 
I open up the back spigot, drain the tank, then run water through the fill pipe until a few more gallons come out the spigot. Let it fill a bit, then run water through the faucet in the sink for a gallon or so. Then fill it up. We are on treated city water, very good tasting water, and that seems to keep the mold and stuff down. We are always a bit sad when we run out of 'home' water on a trip, but thems the breaks, as they say.
 
I do the same as RONR (above) and use the weak bleach mixture while filling the empty tank at the beginning of the season. Additionally, I drain and completely fill and drain the tank 2 more times after adding the bleach mixture, Then I fill with water for use which like ROMR is mostly for washing and cooking water. I am comfortable that the water system is safe and the water drinkable, However, our local water is quite hard and doesn't taste great

As a consequence we carry separate containers of drinking water which we start out with from our reverse osmosis system and them refill on the road as needed from RO water dispensers or bottled water. I also carry a MSR backpacker manual pump type water filter just in case.

No need to winterize here.
 
I fill with city water, run through a potable water hose, and a Camco carbon filter. In the camper, the water goes through the pump and into a 3m filter that claims it filters out 99% of bacteria, viruses and even chemicals. Water tastes better on the road than it does through a Brita at home.

I don’t drain between trips nor run bleach through it.
 
Vic, et al,

As long as you only fill with municipal treated water a 3 micron filter is OK to filter out sediment. If you use a source from a steam or other non-municipal source it is safer to use a filter smaller than 1 micron to filter out bacteria, microbes and parasites like Giardia, Cryptosporidium. To filter out viruses the filter needs to be 0.1 micron or less.

https://www.cdc.gov/parasites/crypto/gen_info/filters.html

https://www.freshwatersystems.com/blogs/blog/how-to-remove-viruses-from-drinking-water

I hope this information is useful.

Craig
 
Thanks all for your replies. It is always good to hear how other folks do things and pick up valuable info. We are fortunate to live rural and have a deep well with ultra pure spring water. It is always 48 degrees when it comes out of the faucet and has absolutely no taste.
That said when we go on long trips and we use all of our own water it is hard to drink other stuff.

I too use 1/4 cup bleach in 20 gallons of water and let it sit all night at the start of the season. I have to winterize it with the RV antifreeze and have to flush the system a few times to get that all out. When we leave here in the winter the tank will be winterized so will have to leave it that way unless I can find a spigot (I carry the hose in the wheel well area. I then carry (2) the suitcase water 2.5 gallons.

It seems like we all have similar habits on cleaning the pipes/tank. I wonder at what point the tanks need replacing ? I am probably overthinking it as usual!
Rob
 
For storage areas warm enough to not need winterization, we'd been told to leave tanks full as one can never really drain them and get them completely dry unless you run a lot of (low pressure to be safe) clean compressed air throughout the system. There are very dilute solution ratios of bleach one can add for long-term storage or even so dilute you can safely drink it, way below the typical amounts for sanitization for a couple hours followed by draining, rinsing, and possible neutralization with dilute white vinegar solutions. I simply drain and water plants with the municipal tapwater (no added bleach, of course) every couple of weeks or once a month and then immediately refill again if we otherwise aren't using the camper, where all parts of system are enclosed and no sunlight hits anything. But, this method also worked on a Roadtrek with tank and some lines under floorpan where a little light could reflect off ground and potentially support algae growth but never did.
 
Very interesting Craig. Have you or anyone you know used this instead of the RV antifreeze method? Being in a place where the temps get sub zero often I would hate to find in the Spring not all water was blown out. I have a quality compressor and if this is sure to work it would solve my problem of having to put antifreeze in a couple months before departure in January. That way I could fill the tank from a hose at a park once I got to warmer climes. That would be dandy.

But just now to refresh my memory I went out and opened the water tank fill door. The fitting lacks hose threads and there is that breather screen pipe as well to somehow seal off to allow pressure to force the water out the rear drain and sink pump spigot.
 
Does anyone know of a replacement water intake assembly and door unit that matches ups with the FWC models that has the threaded hose set up? This would make it possible to use a compressor to blow ou water from system.
 
Thanks for that I'll call FWC and see if they know if I can swap out the fill door setup as my 2011 Eagle does not have the city water hose attachment...just the fill cap hose .
 
buckland said:
Thanks for that I'll call FWC and see if they know if I can swap out the fill door setup as my 2011 Eagle does not have the city water hose attachment...just the fill cap hose .
Click to expand...
Rob, I'm sure you can make that swap. The opening in the outside wall is the same size and if you can reach the fittings on the inside, its and easy process to swap them
 
Well that would be usual Vic! Something that is easy! I'd enjoy something with 3 simple steps for a change. Probably be able to finds it on Amazon rather than FWC. Thanks for the reassurance.
Rob
 
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