I am thinking of no longer drinking the water from my tanks just because it does not taste the best even with putting it through a Brita Water filter that sits in the fridge. The van is only new and used 3 times and filled only with water that we drink from at home.
While this may hijack the original thread, which I think the conclusion was not to put river water into your tanks thanks to
@yabbietol scaring everyone off (good input BTW), what are others thoughts on their water from their tanks for drinking?
Would a better inline filter make it taste better?
Should the tank be cleaned out?
Thanks for the vote of confidence.
I am sorry for the scare, but here is another, the Brita type filters while ok for lumpy bits do very little to stop dangerous bacteria, Brita (and others) often use charcoal filters to take out some chemicals and odours, but they are not 100% safe or effective. They should only be used with already treated town water I would not recommend them or similar filters to make water safe. There are filters for making water safe, but they are expensive and often need to be pumped with a lot of pressure, they use .1 micron ceramic filters and sometimes silver to block and kill bacteria. My MSR (brand) hand operated water filter takes a lot of effort to filter a couple of litres of water and cost about $250.
In line filters can be useful especially if you combine one cartridge of 5 micro filter ( to get the big bits) followed by a cartridge Carbon filter (for odour, large bacteria (amoebic bugs) and small particle removal, but you also need .1 micron (ceramic - about $90 per cartridge, reusable after cleaning) for most dangerous bacteria. So three stage filter is best, two stage filter can work ok. I use two stage filtering for our drinking water at home (5 micron and .1 micron ceramic), I do not bother with a charcoal filter as our tank water is very clean and does not smell and expensive charcoal filters often need replacing to continue to be effective.
The best simple option is to fill tanks with town water which is already treated with chlorine and meets international water quality standards (which is the case in most of Australia). Water tanks should be made of food grade polyethylene (not sure about Jayco water tanks) so should not leach plasticisers and hence not have a taste, new tanks may have contaminates such chemicals like silicone and oils. It always a good idea to fill and flush new water containers several times before use to clean out manufacturing residues. Diluted bleach will help with the cleaning.
I would recommend draining tanks and storing them dry, but leaving them filled for a few weeks should not be a problem, if you used clean treated water to fill them. Drain them if you used water you are not sure about its quality or safety. Algae growth and bacteria growth may occur in stored water, if you have a sulphur (rotten egg) smell you have a serious anaerobic (toxic) bacteria problem and the water should not be drunk, flush your van tanks and treat with bleach and then flush again with clean water till no sulphur smell.
