RV Fresh Water Tank Sanitizing Tutorial
Dave SolbergDescription
One of our Club members reached out with an important question: is there a safe and efficient way to flush an RV fresh water tank? The answer is yes, but as we’ve learned, rule number one for RV maintenance is all units are not built the same. Thus, what works for your particular motor home isn’t guaranteed to work for your neighbor’s camper.
That’s why it’s so important to do your homework and discover what exactly you need to get the job done on your specific model. In this lesson, we do some of that research for you and discusses some of the common methods we’ve utilized over the years to clean and sanitize an RV fresh water tank.
What should you use to clean your RV fresh water tank?
To help you navigate the process with as little hassle as possible, RV expert Dave Solberg introduces all the important things you ought to keep in mind when flushing your RV fresh water tank. He talks about the various products available for purchase from popular providers, then explains what he likes to use on his own vehicle (Hint: you can find it in your laundry room).
As Dave mentions, the typical issue RVers run into when cleaning their fresh water system is accessing the tank itself. You’ll learn the most cost-effective ways to circumvent this problem, and figure out the solution that works best for your needs. With Dave’s tips, you should have that tank flushed and sanitized in no time flat!
A question came in from one of our members on sanitizing the fresh water. They have a previously owned 2005 Gulf stream and like to know how to flush and clean out the fresh water. I think they had left the water in it and hadn't been drained for a long time as a way to sanitize, the safe way to do it. We showed a lot of fresh water, excuse me, a lot of black water and gray water flushing. The fresh water is a little different because a lot of companies now are going to what's called an automatic fill switch. Now, to clean or sanitize a fresh water system, there are a variety of different products on the market, Thetford has some products that are fresh water sanitizer, deodorizer, even some that are just called freshener. There's about five or six different companies that are out in the market that have a product that not only sanitize but kind of deodorize, get that taste out of there, sometime that plastic taste. Now, a lot of owners like to use vinegar in a water solution. I personally like to use bleach. And so what I do is I'm going to drain the tank and I'm going to put a bleach solution back in it, and I'm going to use about a cup of bleach to about 10 gallons of water. And I don't mind the smell or the taste of bleach myself. So I let it sit overnight. You know, if I got a 50, 60 gallon tank, I'll put that in. And what I'll typically do is let it sit overnight and just kind of absorb those odors and sanitize it and then dump it out. And bleach is fine to put down any type of a septic or a sanitary district system like your dump valves or so forth. Now, the challenge is going to come in getting that product into your freshwater tank. If you have a gravity fill, which usually is on the side of the unit, just out in the outside you'll see it on a variety of different models that I can just put a hose and a funnel and I can pour all that water down in it. But there are a lot of manufacturers that today that are using the city water fill with a valve to fill the freshwater tank. Now, what happens with that is I've got a simple outlet that I hooked my city water to with pressurized water coming in and then when I flipped the valve over it will fill my fresh water tank. It doesn't allow me to put my product that I want to deodorize sanitize into that freshwater tank. So with that, it's a little more of a challenge. What I typically see if you have a winterizing kit make sure you run the bypass off of your fresh water system then put your hose for the winterizing kit into your water solution whether you're using the Thetford product, Cameco product or vinegar bleach solution, put that in and that'll draw the stuff into your water system. Typically, they won't go into the water tank, but at least it'll go through the pipes and into the system. About the only way you can do it in a fresh water tank. If you have one of the fill switches without a gravity feed is to get an external pump. So, you're just going to make up a short hose that hooks to your city water fill, it would go to the outlet side of a pump, it could be a small little pump like you would use for a fountain if you have an extra Share flow pump. And then on the other side of it you'd put a small hose that would go into your your water supply that you're trying to fresh. And so with that type of system, it's a lot more difficult, hopefully, you have a gravity feed and you can just put it down and sanitize your tanks.
How about SHOWING what you are talking about? "Take a hose, get an outside pump, connect it to the...." Pictures visualize what you are describing.
My rig has a whole house water filter/housing that I can put solution in to sanitize my fresh water tank. Will remove the filter first when I do this.
You can also dump bleach vinegar or whatever in water hose and screw back to city hook up then turn water on to fill tank
Why wouldn’t you just pour the bleach into your fresh water hose and then hook the hose up to city water? The pump is a useless step from what I can see.
With regard to your sanitization of the freshwater tank I have found a few alternatives to the ones you suggested. I have been using a pre-filter replaceable cartridge system. I fill that with bleach and then it’s pass-through with the city fill another alternative is that I’ve taken the cap out of the tank that I have access to and use the funnel to pour bleach or a bleach solution into there and then mixes in the tank as it is filled Hope that is useful
The dealer advised that to sanitize a system with just a city water fill, we should put the bleach into the hose, hook up the city water and flush the bleach into the system. Same as Teresa's response below.
I used a funnel and poured bleach into the hose hooked up to the trailer, then hooked it up to water and turned it on to force the bleach into the tank.