Drinking or potable water "Strategy"?

[BrianCO]

I would encourage everyone to sanitize their fresh water tank, regardless of whether you drink the water or not.
It's entirely possible to encounter staph or other bacteria in well water sources, or a dirty faucet head, that would be more than happy to infect an open wound, your eye, etc. IMO it's a pretty easy task to sanitize every now and then and keep the scales tipped in your favor.

[Doneworking]

I have followed the same routine for decades. First, I flush and sanitize (using bleach) our water tanks and system before any trip if it has been more than a few weeks since the last sanitation procedure. I am fine with storing our municipal supplied water in our tanks for several weeks. After each lengthy trip, I sanitize the system again.

So, in summary, I sanitize the system, flush and fill it several times a year. We shower and use the water in the system for most things except drinking and cooking. We carry several one gallon store bought containers of water and two people can easily hydrate with a gallon a day.

Do I "over do" the sanitization? Probably. Have we ever been sick from traveling and suspected the water? No. At a cost of less than a buck a day for assured water to consume, this works for us and we just feel safer.

Incidentally, one reason we like to store our rig with water in the tank all the time during the year (we store inside and don't have to winterize) is I believe it helps to keep the seals in better shape than letting them dry out. We have never had a toilet odor and I think keeping a quarter inch or so of water in the stool really helps that situation.

Incidentally, don't forget to sanitize your regulator and supply hose as well as the tanks. It is easy to forget that part of the process.

[Moonrider]

I like my water cold, so I fill a Brita water/filter pitcher from my tank and keep it in the fridge. That said, I bought my unit new just a few months ago, so I'm the only owner and know how the rig is managed. I would hate not being able to trust the water my tank, and would do whatever it takes to accomplish that goal.

[ikanode]

The OP said: "from my garden hose"

If you really mean garden hose that's been attached to an outdoor faucet used to water the garden, wash the car etc. That's not a good idea. It may leach chemicals into the water, may have algae and mold growing in it, and may have had insects crawl in the open end. (I speak about algae from personal experience.)

Use a hose labeled as "Drinking Water Safe", use it only for filling your fresh water tank, drain it between uses, and store it in a sanitary fashion. (I sanitize mine on the same schedule as my water tank.)

[avanti]

Originally Posted by ikanode

use it only for filling your fresh water tank

I followed you up to this point. What would be wrong with using it for other purposes? I would think that the more it was used, the better. Every use with city water represents a chlorine treatment and a detrius flush.

[ChicagoTom]

I just by the $1 a gallon at Walmart or wherever shopping. I'm a pretty big water drinker and it seems to last until I go shopping again. I keep a nice thermos in the fridge, so ice cold, and refill the plastic jug if I'm at home. Tank water used for everything else. I've actually tested it a few times and it
s good to go, just prefer the drinking buck a gallon water.

[ikanode]

Originally Posted by avanti

I followed you up to this point. What would be wrong with using it for other purposes? I would think that the more it was used, the better. Every use with city water represents a chlorine treatment and a detrius flush.

I guess it depends on the other uses. If you can keep both ends clean; stored out of the light and heat, and drained when it's not going to be used for awhile, etc.

I'm no expert but the chlorine in city water is just strong enough to keep things from growing in pipes--not enough to sanitize a hose.

Just seems easier to leave it packed in the RV.

[tbroad]

We have generally relied upon taking or purchasing gallon jugs for water for drinking, cooking, etc ... however, over the winter we acquired an iSpring DH1 faucet filter (https://www.123filter.com/ac/faucet-...lter-df-series) that we have yet to try, other than "taste tests," due to being COVID sequestered in a safer part of the country. Hopefully soon we will venture out.

The specifications of the filter when we purchased had a filter size of something like 0.1 microns, which means besides filtering out nasty chemicals it should also filter cysts and "germs," but the latest specs do not mention filter size. Probably those darn lawyers trying to limit liability. In any event, we plan to be drinking and cooking with filtered water from the fresh water tanks.

[InterBlog]

Originally Posted by InterBlog

....
BLUF: I personally won't drink water that is not in possession of a regulation-compliant chlorine residual, unless I know for sure that it has been properly disinfected by some other method - and that the state of disinfection has been maintained across time.

Chlorination only lasts around 4 days. I'm not sure where the old rule of thumb came from about disinfecting fresh water tanks just once a year.

Of course, in order for [water that originally had a compliant chlorine residual but then lost it] to cause a problem for a human drinker, it would need a source of introduced pathogens, and some way of sustaining those pathogens metabolically. ....

Regarding my bolded excerpt above, here is anecdotal support for the assertion that an infectious fresh water tank scenario is not difficult to achieve, at least not in the subtropics. On Air Forums, there's a van owner who lives about 90 miles from me and had the following to report two days ago:

"We have been lax in emptying the [fresh water] tank after each trip and green slime has formed."

Obviously, the practice of once-per-year chlorine shocking is not meeting this owner's safe water objective. If there's "green slime" in there, there are pathogens present in some concentration. Maybe or maybe not high enough density to precipitate gastrointestinal illness. Who would volunteer to test that hypothesis? Let's just err on the side of caution and say that there is.

Here's an eyebrow-raiser: According to published reports, that van owner is living in an area where 100% of the drinking water derives from deep Texas aquifers. It's not surface water (which is loaded with gunk even post-processing) and I don't think it's what we call GUI (pronounced "gooey") - Groundwater Under the Influence of surface water. He was apparently filling his tank with water that should have been particularly clean.

For that reason, how the hell the substrate for pathogenic development obviously found its way into his fresh tank, I cannot say. Did it simply occur via tank breathing through the pressure equalization vent? This is the subtropics and Nature tends to find a way here - organisms flourish because our conditions are chronically conducive. It does not take much for them to get a foothold.

Tank breathing is A Thing, and it's something that non-sterilization proponents tend to overlook. Every fresh water tank is open to the environment - it has an air vent on it so that when water is added or removed, the freeboard can adjust accordingly. When air is sucked into tanks, it carries whatever happens to be on the breeze. Nutrients, particulates, pathogens. Small amounts, sure, but under the right conditions, they can reproduce.