Potable Water Tank Best Practices Question

[whatme]

Hello everyone, I’m after the best practices for my 18FBS when it comes to the left over water in the water tank after a trip. Most trips when I arrive home there is still near ½ tank of water but my next trip may be 20-30 days later. So is it best to drain the tank and leave empty/dry, or refill the tank till full, or place an additive like ‘Refresh’ while sitting.

Also the hot water tank, drain leave empty or leave water in tank?

[profdant139]

I refill when I get home and just leave the water alone. There is a lot of chlorine in our municipal water supply. Never had a problem with algae or impurities after 17 years of doing this.

But we do not drink our "tank water" because it tastes like chlorine -- it is just for washing and domestic use. We bring separate special jugs of reverse osmosis water for drinking and cooking. It's a hassle, but there is no alternative.

[APD]

I can't advise on the fresh water tank. We always camp with at least W/E so we removed ours for extra storage....
As far as the water heater, I always drain and rinse/flush it after every trip. No problems so far.
We carry bottled water for drinking as well. Goes in the cooler alongside the Michelob.

[RipVan]

Generally speaking, we don’t drink the water from the fresh water tank (nor the water when hooked up to “city water”) without first passing it through a Brita filter. Our FF does have an under sink charcoal filter for cold water going to the kitchen sink faucet but we still use the Brita filtered water for drinking. We also use an inline filter when hooked to “city water”. We hardly ever fill the reservoir with water from our home before setting out for a trip. 2 reasons: adds 200+ lbs of weight ahead of the axles and we don’t have enough potable water hose to go from the nearest outside spigot to the camper ;-(. We have plenty of “garden hose” but water filled via that mode always tastes awful and might even be toxic!

[RipVan]

Just going to add a comment RE: “best practice” with the fresh water reservoir and a little to my embarrassment because of an issue I experienced this past week. As I mentioned in my post above, we rarely travel with the reservoir filled but our last trip consisted of staying at site with full hookups but then staying at a site where we didn’t know for sure if potable water was readily available. With that in mind I tanked up at the full hookup site before leaving. All was good. The second site didn’t have facilities for dumping the wastewater tanks either but there were places along the route home for that. After stopping to dump the wastewater, I figured I’d drain the freshwater reservoir too. The drain valve was less than easy to turn to the drain position but I finally got it there. Before pulling back onto the road I did notice that the water wasn’t exactly gushing out of the short piece of 1/2” tubing beneath the camper. I thought it might be the angle since we were on a slight incline so I just “hit the road”. After a bit I stopped to check on the process. No flow from the tube so I figured the tank was empty. I checked but was amazed to find the tank at nearly the same level last when I opened the valve! Something was blocking the flow. I was pretty sure that the valve was in the proper position but checked to be absolutely sure. I had a length of wire that I was able to advance through the tube into the valve. Yup, it was blocked but now flowing freely. Didn’t see what was blocking the valve but I’m assuming that it was something that “grew” in the little bit of water that remained in the tank while the camper was in storage!
It’s too late to make this long story short but I’m thinking that the freshwater system is due for an aggressive chlorine treatment in the near future i.e. before the next trip!

[Eagle]

Sodium Dichlor works better than chlorine bleach IMO