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Last Updated on August 24, 2024 by Paul Clayton
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How to Clean RV Water System With Vinegar
Maintaining the hygiene and cleanliness of your RV water system is critical for ensuring a safe and comfortable camping experience. One effective method to achieve this is using vinegar, a common household item with potent antibacterial properties.
- Draining the Water System: Turn off the RV water supply.
- Preparing the Vinegar Solution: Mix vinegar with fresh water.
- Filling the System with Vinegar Solution: Open all faucets.
- Letting the Vinegar Solution Soak: Allow the solution to sit.
- Draining the Vinegar Solution: Empty the system.
- Replacing the Water Filter: Install a new water filter.
Your RV’s fresh water system is the key to most of the conveniences that you may have in your RV. While freshwater isn’t necessary for an RV’s operation, its quality and quantity are crucial for ensuring a positive experience.
This guide will walk you through how to clean your RV water system with vinegar. This cost-effective and eco-friendly method makes it a preferred choice for many RV owners.
Learn how to clean your RV water system with vinegar to ensure it remains free from bacteria and mold and provide you with clean and safe water.
Why Clean Your RV’s Freshwater System?
While it’s obvious that your RV’s fresh water system should be kept clean, what are the things that you should be especially mindful of?
Well, here is what your RV’s fresh water system may be contaminated with:
- Mineral buildup. This may be caused by the minerals contained in water.
- Mold and mildew buildup. The growth of these can be fostered by humidity inside the tank.
- Bacteria can get into your freshwater system from various sources, e.g., water of unknown quality.
Of these, you should be most mindful of bacteria. Among the bacteria that could make a home in your freshwater system are E. coli, salmonella, and listeria. These bacteria can cause food poisoning and severe diseases, and they are the biggest threat that could be lurking inside your freshwater system.
That said, minerals and mold are no less harmful and should also be dealt with.
Why Would You Want To Use Vinegar For Tank Cleaning?
Chlorine-based bleaches are very commonly used in water and kitchen sanitation. And while bleach can be very effective at sanitation, it poses significant health hazards.
In low concentrations (around four parts per million), bleach can effectively kill pathogens in drinking water while keeping it safe to consume. However, accidental ingestion of water with high bleach concentrations could lead to irritation, burns, and even a fatal income.
Not only that, but you need to be careful when handling bleach while doing a cleanup. Contact with skin or eyes causes irritation, burns, or drying, and inhaling bleach fumes harms the lungs.
The solution? Well, perhaps the best option is to switch from bleach to another, safer substance for cleaning. In particular, we want to discuss using vinegar to clean the RV’s freshwater system.
Bleach is completely okay in moderation.
Bleach is tasteless, odorless, and safe for consumption at low concentrations. Most city water lines use bleach for sanitation anyway, and these lines are safe because they use bleach in moderation.
The thing here is that the city lines are closely monitored to ensure that there is only as much bleach as needed in them. But can you ensure enough bleach in your freshwater system to sanitize it while keeping you safe?
If not, other safe options, like vinegar, are much better. It will take a lot of vinegar to harm, and as long as you follow the general 50/50 water-to-vinegar formula, you should be okay.
Is Vinegar An Effective Freshwater Tank Cleaning Solution?
Bleach is a very common household cleaning solution. It’s widely available, and it’s also much safer to use than bleach.
But is vinegar effective?
It appears that yes.
The Colorado State University Extension provides this handy chart comparing a few solutions commonly used for kitchen sanitization. In particular, the ability of the solutions to kill bacteria that often contaminate food – listeria, E. coli, and salmonella.
White distilled vinegar, like chlorine bleach or hydrogen peroxide, can kill these bacteria. But there’s a catch – the vinegar must be at 130 degrees Fahrenheit to kill these bacteria.
Notably, baking soda – another solution commonly used for cleaning and sanitization – is ineffective at any temperature or contact time with the surface.
While unheated vinegar will do a decent job of cleaning and sanitizing your freshwater system, it may not be able to kill the mentioned bacteria. This means you must find a way to pump hot vinegar into your RV’s freshwater system.
Another great thing about hot vinegar is that it effectively removes mineral deposits that may have built up during those weeks and months while your freshwater system was left untreated! Vinegar is acidic and can thus dissolve mineral deposits from smooth surfaces.
And when heated, vinegar will do its job even more effectively!
How To Clean Your RV Freshwater System With Vinegar
Below is a step-by-step process of cleaning your RV fresh water system with hot white vinegar:
- Set your water heater to over 130 degrees Fahrenheit. One hundred thirty degrees should be enough, but you may want to set it higher just in case. Ensure the heater is off – you don’t need it yet.
- Drain all water from your RV’s freshwater system. Drain the water from the hot water tank as well.
- Prepare a 50/50 solution of water and white vinegar. Make at least 15 gallons of the solution (7.5 gallons of water and 7.5 gallons of vinegar).
- Fill your fresh water tank with the white vinegar solution.
- Open your kitchen faucet. Turn your water pump on and keep it on until the vinegar-water solution comes out of the faucet.
- Close the faucet and turn the water off.
- Turn your water heater on. Let the vinegar solution heat to the set temperature. It may take 20-30 minutes for the solution to heat up.
- In the meantime, mount a thread adapter to the kitchen faucet. Then, attach a garden hose to the adapter and run it to the freshwater tank intake. The intake should be outside of the RV.
- Once the vinegar solution has heated up, turn the heater off and turn your water pump on.
- Run the solution through the hot side of the kitchen faucet until the fresh water tank gets filled up.
- Once the vinegar solution is in the freshwater tank, you must open each fixture until you smell the vinegar. You need to open the fixtures individually and move to the next one once you smell the vinegar.
Note that you should get cold and hot water out of each fixture’s cold and hot sides. Besides, remember that the cold side of the kitchen faucet should be opened last.
- Once the vinegar solution has been run through every hot and cold line in your RV (including your ice maker, drinking water dispenser in the fridge door, or whatnot), disconnect the garden hose.
- Let the vinegar sit in your RV’s fresh water system overnight.
- Remove the anode rod from the water heater and then drain and rinse the heater. You may see sediment coming out of the water heater. Place the anode rod back and set the water heater to its default temperature (usually 120 degrees).
- Hook your fresh water system to a water supply and run water through the entire system until there is no vinegar smell from the fixtures. Be sure to run water through your fixtures’ hot and cold sides.
How Often Should You Sanitize Your RV Freshwater System?
The abovementioned procedure isn’t too difficult to implement, but it takes time and preparation. You should thus perform a deep cleanup of your RV fresh water system as infrequently as possible.
How often should you sanitize your RV’s fresh water system, though? Here are a few suggestions:
- Every spring while de-winterizing your RV.
- If you sense strange odors when using water.
- If the RV’s water system hasn’t been used for a few weeks.
- After you’ve used water from a questionable source.
- If a boil water advisory is in force. This is because these advisories are issued when the local water supply is likely to be contaminated by pathogens.
Flush Your Water System When Not In Use
You should ensure that your freshwater system is empty while not in use. Bacteria need moisture, and if you keep the RV fresh water system filled, you will be encouraging bacteria to thrive.
By flushing your freshwater system, you are ensuring that its environment is not friendly to bacteria growth.
Keep in mind that some bacteria can survive dry conditions. Due to this, after your RV’s fresh water system has sat empty for some time, you should perform a cleanup before using it to ensure no bacteria in it.
What Not To Mix With White Vinegar?
White vinegar, a common household cleaning agent, has many beneficial uses, but it’s important to understand what not to mix with white vinegar. Certain combinations can be hazardous; for example, combining vinegar with bleach produces toxic chlorine gas, while mixing it with ammonia creates a harmful chemical known as chloramine.
Those blue window cleaning products should be avoided as they often contain ammonia. Therefore, always use white vinegar independently of other cleaning products to ensure safe and effective cleaning.
Avoid Water From Questionable Sources
A key thing to keep in mind when RVing is that you should avoid questionable water sources. It’s better to have your water supply from a reliable place than rely on the water hookups of a subpar campground. The water of unknown quality is likely to contain pathogens, not to mention that it may be highly mineralized and generally polluted.
City water lines are the most well-monitored out there, so you should replenish your water sources in cities. Alternatively, if you know a reliable campground, you may also pick up some fresh water there.
Final Words
Maintaining a clean RV water system is vital for all RV owners, and using vinegar is a practical and cost-effective cleaning method. Start by shutting off the RV’s water supply to avoid system contamination during the cleanse. Next, mix vinegar with fresh water to create a cleaning solution. Introduce this solution into the system by opening all faucets, allowing it to permeate throughout.
Allow the vinegar solution to sit for several hours, enabling it to dissolve any mineral deposits, bacteria, or other impurities in the system. After the soak, thoroughly drain the solution from the system, ensuring no residual vinegar taste remains in the water.
The last step in this cleaning process involves replacing the water filter. Post-cleansing with vinegar and fitting a new water filter helps keep the RV water system clean for an extended duration. Thus, cleaning your RV water system with vinegar secures a hygienic water supply and extends the life of your RV’s plumbing infrastructure.
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