Drinking water - RV-Dreams Community Forum

Terry and Jo · RV-Dreams Family Member

Drinking water

victorianlady51 · RV-Dreams Family Member

We're thinking of buying a used RV. I don't like to buy bottled water. What do you do to make sure that your water tank is clean and the water is drinkable?

BRDof3 · RV-Dreams Community Member

If you use it often then it should stay clean by virtue if being regularly flushed out, particularly if you are using city water supplies that are chlorinated. We aren't full-timers, so I know my tank is not flushed out that often. About twice per season I fill the tank with water and 1/4 - 1/2 cup of bleach, run the pump to make sure the water is in all the lines, then let it sit for 12-24 hours. I pump out the remaining tank of water, using all the lines, to clear the chlorine, then run another tank of clean water to make sure.

That may not be perfect, but it does help keep it clean. Our regular parking spot uses water from a well, and has a softener system. If I don't clean it out a couple of times the water tends to have a salty taste to it.

sirwinston21 · RV-Dreams Family Member

Use about a 1/4 cup of bleach for each 15 gallons of water in your tank to sanitize it. Run the bleachy water thru you lines and let it sit overnight if you can. Then flush the system till you don't get a bleach smell from your faucets. You can google how to sanitize your system, it is not hard.

Technomadia · RV-Dreams Family Member

We sanitize our fresh tank and systems a couple time a year (similar to as described above). Plus we have a dual canister water filter system that filters before entering the coach. And we installed an under counter 10-stage filter in the kitchen for our drinking water.

- Cherie

thebearII · RV-Dreams Family Member

An old RVer trick is to pour the contents of a cheap bottle of wine in the tank. Fill it half full of water and drive to your next destination. Drain the tank and refill with fresh water.

We use a two stage filter and have never had a problem. Sometimes our 5th wheel will sit unused for a couple of months with less than 1/2 tanl of fresh water. No problems.

By the way a lot of the RV parks/resorts have the machines where you can pay to refill gallon or 5 gallon water bottles with multi-stage filtered water.

-- Edited by thebearII on Thursday 18th of October 2012 11:10:55 AM

Hdrider · RV-Dreams Family Member

We do as others do with bleach about twice a year. Now that we are fulltime I will feel even better about because we will run fresh water through the tanks more often. We also run water through 2 filters before it comes out of the tap,

Lucky Mike · RV-Dreams Family Member

I carry 2... 7 gallon blue totes......when Im in an area of good water I fill them for the commute through the bad zones...........I also do the bleach ritual twice a year, normally during movement I will fill the tank to 1/3 or 1/2 so I get a good cleaning action going .......using the water durring road times for sanitary and hand washing gets it into the system plus priming............then I will do a complete flush on arrival at the next overnite.

this works well if it is a 1 day run and good water is available at my next stop......I also use filter system coming in and at drinking port.

RVRon · RV-Dreams Family Member

Hdrider wrote:
We do as others do with bleach about twice a year. Now that we are fulltime I will feel even better about because we will run fresh water through the tanks more often. We also run water through 2 filters before it comes out of the tap,

We do the same thing as far as the bleach thing and the filters. We use a filter on the campground water hose bib and then have another one on the faucet. So far, in nearly 40 moves this year we've had only a couple of places that the filters didn't make the water drinkable. We carry a couple of gallons of bottled water just in case we hit some really bad water that the filters can't fix.