Ensuring clean, safe drinking water in your RV is important to your health and requires you to sanitize your RV water system. Proper care and maintenance is a must. If your RV has been sitting in storage or has not been used for a while, the freshwater storage tank, hot water tank, and water lines are a great place for bacteria to grow. I sanitize each spring even though we are regular users, and it’s a great time to check the hot water tank anode rod.
The generally accepted method to sanitize your RV water system as outlined below involves filling the fresh water system with a solution of household bleach and running the solution through the entire RV water system. Then let it stand for at least four hours. I generally try to fill my tanks in the late afternoon or evening and let mine sit overnight. Finally, flush the system to remove the bleach taste and smell.
- Drain all of the water out of the water system, this includes the hot water tank, freshwater tank, and the water lines, and then close all of the drain valves. You do not want to start this process with water that is questionable or of unknown quality in your RV water system.
- If you have an internal or external water filter, remove it from the water system. After completion, this is a good time to replace it with a new filter.
- Determine the size of your RV water system, the freshwater tank plus the hot water tank, and 2 to 3 gallons for water lines depending on the size of your rig.
- Prepare a solution using chlorine bleach (non-scented or non-gel) and water. I usually use a 5-gallon paint bucket for this process.
- Use 1/4 cup of bleach per 10 gallons. My fresh tank holds 80 gallons, plus 12 gallons for the water heater and a few more for the water lines. I will use 2 1/2 cups of bleach and fill the 5-gallon paint bucket with water.
- Add the bleach mixture to the fresh tank. Never pour straight bleach in the RV fresh tank.
- If you have a bypass for your hot water tank, make sure that is set for normal use so that the bleached mixture will be pumped through the hot water tank.
- Top up the freshwater tank with water.
- Run the chlorinated water through all lines (hot and cold one at a time) for one or two minutes, you should be able to smell the chlorine.
- Open the low point drain valves for a few seconds to get the bleach solution in all lines.
- Top up the freshwater tank with water again
- Let it sit for 4 hours minimum, overnight is better. The most important thing is to wait for the appropriate amount of time for the tank to be properly sanitized. Note: Double the bleach is not half the time
- Drain and rinse the water tank and water lines several times with fresh water.
- The water should now be safe to drink but if the chlorine odor is too strong you can add a mixture of 1/2 cup of baking soda and a gallon of water to the freshwater tank, repeat the freshwater flush.