Sanitize ONLY the Fresh Water Tank (not the RV water lines)

[wineshopper]

This may only be a topic of interest to me, but I did not see this posted anywhere else in my searches. I wanted to sanitize my fresh water tank since we rarely boondock. No need to sanitize the water lines. I also wanted to use city water during the sanitize process while waiting for the tank to sanitize. Turns out this is easily doable with the Nautilus system, but I wanted to still prove it can be done. Here are the steps:
1. Turn off city water supply and release pressure in system by turning on a faucet hot and cold.
2. Turn off water heater as a protective measure. Probably don't really need to do it.
3. I drained the fresh water tank - about half a gallon came out.
4. Connected water flow meter to incoming hose (not 100% necessary, but helpful if you have one)
5. Switch Nautilus system to Powerfill
6. Add about 30 gallons of water to fresh water tank. During this fill, I tested whether any water would come out of faucets. None at all. I did this to make sure when I add bleach next, that none would bleed into water lines since I wanted to switch back to City Water after the tank was full as use the RV as normal.
7. Turn off water fill. Allow system a minute to release the pressure. Disconnect the hose, drain some water from it.
8. Add two cups household bleach to hose with funnel. Reconnect the hose to the spigot. Turn it back on.
9. Add water until the tank overflows, then shut off the water.
10. Switch Nautilus back to City Water. Turn on the water. Use the RV with City Water as you normally would.
11. Wait overnight for tank to sanitize. Drain and rinse fresh water tank as normal.

This process worked perfectly. Many of you will say - Duh!. But I had never seen this posted in any forum, Jayco or otherwise. Everything out there talks about sanitizing the tank AND the water lines in the RV. Not just the fresh water tank. The most painful part is the time to drain the tank using the small external spigot. There's 75 gallons of fresh water that has to gravity drain out of that small outlet. I rigged up the septic hose underneath that spigot to drain to the campground septic since I didn't want 75 gallons of water flowing across our site. My process to rinse is simply:

1. Turn off city water supply.
2. Release pressure with a faucet
3. Leave fresh water tank valve/spigot open
4. Switch to Powerfill on Nautilus
5. Fill fresh water tank until it overflows.
6. Turn off Powerfill. Switch to City Water and use RV water as normal.
7. Allow rinse water to drain out.

Hope that helps someone with the unique need I had. Happy travels!

[DarkSideJeep]

Sorry IMHO the entire system should be sanitized. Perhaps the reason there is no guidance for sanitizing just the tank is that just sanitizing the tank is not enough.

First off even though you never boondock you should be using the tank on a regular basis what is the point of sanitizing the tank without doing the rest of the system?

As for using the tank water.

1. Have you ever stopped at a rest stop with no facilities? How can you use the restroom in your trailer if you do not carry at least a little water? A gallon or two is not enough.
2. Standard operating procedure is that you should ALWAYS turn off the city water when you leave the RV unattended during the day and at night when you go to sleep. How do you use the bathroom at night if you have no water in the tank? Surely you do not want to have to go outside to turn the water on and then do it again after you have don your business?
3. There have been too many reports of RV owners coming back after a day trip or getting up at night only to find themselves ankle deep in water because a leak has sprung out. After all any RV be it a motorhome or trailer is a rolling magnitude 7 earthquake. Stuff works loose.
4. So yes, even when you have a city connection you should be using your tank water.

[dvspl]

My Jayco Greyhawk doesn't have the "Nautilus" system that you mention and I'm not familiar with it. My system sounds like it has similar functions except that when switched to "City Fill Tank" it will definitely pressurize the water system in addition to filling the tank. So your technique wouldn't work for my system. Instead, it has a separate "Sanitize Tank" setting that uses the fresh water pump to suck a water/bleach mixture through the city water inlet. I always sanitize both the tank and the system, but if I wanted to only do the tank, here's how I would do it.
1) Put the correct amount of bleach in a bucket and add water to make a few gallons
2) Use "Sanitize tank" setting to draw mixture through a short hose into the water tank. This mixture will go through my installed water filter so I would remove the filter before doing this step then replace it when the tank is full.
3) Connect pressurized water source to inlet. Use "City Fill Tank" setting to fill the tank to full. The water system will also be pressurized but won't draw any bleach out of the tank into the system.
4) Switch to "City Fixtures" setting during the dwell time while tank is sanitizing.
5) Drain fresh water tank.

[wineshopper]

Thanks for taking the time to respond. I am curious how others use their fresh water tank, but as for us, here is how we address your topics [our approach in brackets]:

Sorry IMHO the entire system should be sanitized. Perhaps the reason there is no guidance for sanitizing just the tank is that just sanitizing the tank is not enough. [I stated the reason why - we often use chlorinated city water when camping, so the lines are staying chlorinated, but not the tank. And I wished to use the RV on city water while the tank was sanitizing/draining/rinsing.]

1. Have you ever stopped at a rest stop with no facilities? How can you use the restroom in your trailer if you do not carry at least a little water? A gallon or two is not enough. [yes, we keep an extra gallon of water for this purpose. Works just fine until we arrive at our next campsite]
2. Standard operating procedure is that you should ALWAYS turn off the city water when you leave the RV unattended during the day and at night when you go to sleep. How do you use the bathroom at night if you have no water in the tank? Surely you do not want to have to go outside to turn the water on and then do it again after you have don your business? [we have never done this in 4 years of RVing. That being said, I know the most conservative approach is to turn city water off each time the RV is unattended]
3. There have been too many reports of RV owners coming back after a day trip or getting up at night only to find themselves ankle deep in water because a leak has sprung out. After all any RV be it a motorhome or trailer is a rolling magnitude 7 earthquake. Stuff works loose. [Understood, but we do not typically do this unless we are unattended for more than a day]
4. So yes, even when you have a city connection you should be using your tank water. [I would be interested in how many folks turn off city water at night or when unattended. I understand the risks and I suspect most RVers do not turn off city water when unattended day or at night. This will inevitably lead to some leaks in some RVs if it happens enough times. Just as at a sticks and bricks, there is a risk to having water always on, RVs suffer a greater risk. But there is still a risk of flooding a home, and homeowners do not typically shut off water. We all take a certain amount of risk with RVing. Shutting off water at night or when away is actually a quick act, if owners like me remember to do it....]

Happy camping!

Originally Posted by DarkSideJeep

Sorry IMHO the entire system should be sanitized. Perhaps the reason there is no guidance for sanitizing just the tank is that just sanitizing the tank is not enough.

First off even though you never boondock you should be using the tank on a regular basis what is the point of sanitizing the tank without doing the rest of the system?

As for using the tank water.

1. Have you ever stopped at a rest stop with no facilities? How can you use the restroom in your trailer if you do not carry at least a little water? A gallon or two is not enough.
2. Standard operating procedure is that you should ALWAYS turn off the city water when you leave the RV unattended during the day and at night when you go to sleep. How do you use the bathroom at night if you have no water in the tank? Surely you do not want to have to go outside to turn the water on and then do it again after you have don your business?
3. There have been too many reports of RV owners coming back after a day trip or getting up at night only to find themselves ankle deep in water because a leak has sprung out. After all any RV be it a motorhome or trailer is a rolling magnitude 7 earthquake. Stuff works loose.
4. So yes, even when you have a city connection you should be using your tank water.

[Max Headroom]

Pretty much what DarkSideJeep said

[dvspl]

Originally Posted by wineshopper

Thanks for taking the time to respond. I am curious how others use their fresh water tank,

We always travel with some water in our tank to use for flushing the toilet and other uses while traveling. I also keep water in the tank while parked in our driveway between trips so we can use it occasionally without hooking up the hose. We often boondock for a few nights while enroute to a FHU campground so that's another reason. But when we're in a campground with water hookups, we use the city water. We don't turn city water off at night but sometimes do during the day if we're going to be gone for the whole day.

My water system and tank are typically empty during the winter so I sanitize both in the spring before my first trip. I don't worry about sanitizing if I've kept them both full with chlorinated (city) water.

[MevetS]

Originally Posted by Max Headroom

Pretty much what DarkSideJeep said

X2 - Sanitizing the complete systems makes a lot more sense to me, as well.

[Traygar]

Originally Posted by DarkSideJeep

Sorry IMHO the entire system should be sanitized. Perhaps the reason there is no guidance for sanitizing just the tank is that just sanitizing the tank is not enough.

First off even though you never boondock you should be using the tank on a regular basis what is the point of sanitizing the tank without doing the rest of the system?

As for using the tank water.

1. Have you ever stopped at a rest stop with no facilities? How can you use the restroom in your trailer if you do not carry at least a little water? A gallon or two is not enough.
2. Standard operating procedure is that you should ALWAYS turn off the city water when you leave the RV unattended during the day and at night when you go to sleep. How do you use the bathroom at night if you have no water in the tank? Surely you do not want to have to go outside to turn the water on and then do it again after you have don your business?
3. There have been too many reports of RV owners coming back after a day trip or getting up at night only to find themselves ankle deep in water because a leak has sprung out. After all any RV be it a motorhome or trailer is a rolling magnitude 7 earthquake. Stuff works loose.
4. So yes, even when you have a city connection you should be using your tank water.

Yep, I can't see a reason to avoid sanitizing the whole system unless you're already on the road, needing to use the city water for living, but feel that the tank has been contaminated. For regular sanitizing to maintain the tanks, we've always got at least a few times a year where there's enough time to sanitize the whole system. It's never occurred to me to do the tank without the lines. I make sure to open all faucets until I can smell bleach before letting it sit, just to make sure all the bugs in there are dead.

BTW, I've never turned the city water off at night, and I don't believe any of my RV friends do either. I generally leave the pump on overnight when boondocking too, but I do turn the water off if we leave the site for an extended time. I'm not saying you're wrong - That risk is probably one to seriously consider. At my age and so many decades doing it this way, it would be hard to change. I still like to set it and forget it, lol. It's part of what I'm paying for with full hookups. Maybe that will come back to bite me one day.

[SteveJ.]

Originally Posted by wineshopper View Post
Thanks for taking the time to respond. I am curious how others use their fresh water tank,

We only use the tank water. The only time we hook up a water hose is to refill the tank.

[Traygar]

Originally Posted by SteveJ.

We only use the tank water. The only time we hook up a water hose is to refill the tank.

Us too, at least more often than not. We dry camp or boondock way more often than full hookup.

[Spirit72]

Wineshopper, et al,
We are shifting from years of a sailboat to a MH. Lotsa similar stuff applies. An old sailor trick is to use Hydrogen Peroxide vs Chlorine bleach.
Pros:
1. Tastes much better
2. Easy to add
3. Less oxidation on parts
Cons:
1. A tad more expensive

Try this site to appropriately mix quantities:
https://www.watermedia.org/how-much-...drinking-water

Happy Trails all,
Spirit72