Cleaning your water tanks

[Gasy]

Just a thought
Those of you with on board water tanks or the plastic water carriers
Are you cleaning and sterilising them out regular
Just a swill out when we get to site is not really good enough
Fernox. LP sterox is ideal for this , no taste , no smell , safe
But this stuff cleans and removes the bio film off as well as sterilising the tanks / water butts out
We use it at work for legionella protection
This would be ideal for on board water tanks
There's 2 types use the ( LP ) sterox cleans as well as sterilisation

[Poohbear]

Milton is good enough for this job and you can get it in your local supermarket. Due to the fact that the tanks are usually black and hidden away inside cupboards they are in complete darkness and therefore biological growth is highly unlikely. Once a year with Milton at the start of the season is more than enough. Cleaning shouldn't be necessary unless you have used some very suspect water in there.

[Gasy]

I disagree
Legionella is in tap water and only needs the correct temp to start to grow

[Poohbear]

And is harmless unless breathed into your lungs via microscopic droplets known as aerosols. Unless you use your water storage tank to supply a shower it's not a risk that you need to consider. There is alot of hysteria around legionella but there are only a handful of cases and they are all related to showers or cooling towers.

[winchman]

Working with high quality water production in my job, I wont use any on board systems for drinking and use bottled water for drinking.
Milton should stop you getting a bad belly as it will clean the tank up, but it wont remove any Bio films but they should be cleaner Bio films.
For those who are going "Whats a Bio Film", its just a collection of stuff( Bacteria, minerals, fungus, pyrogens and other microscopic organisms some good some not) that's often stuck on the inside of water systems like a tide mark around the bath or slime around an unmaintained swimming pool, algae is different.
They usually need mechanical intervention to remove them, Scrubbing etc prior to chemical treatment
I have seen Bio films were the tide mark is around black tanks that operate in the dark as some of the stuff making them up need no light.
For those who fancy some bed time reading and possible membership of the bottled water club
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biofilm

99% of people just use Milton and never have any issues so I would be tempted to stick with that

[winchman]

And is harmless unless breathed into your lungs via microscopic droplets known as aerosols. Unless you use your water storage tank to supply a shower it's not a risk that you need to consider. There is alot of hysteria around legionella but there are only a handful of cases and they are all related to showers or cooling towers.

Heres the bible on it
http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_hea ... onella.pdf
I did the training a few years ago and the only place from memory you could give it to your self would be a very old air con system using water for the cooling medium ( very rare) or possibly a shower.
I don't know of any domestic or camper van cases

[Poohbear]

I did the training a few years ago and the only place from memory you could give it to your self would be a very old air con system using water for the cooling medium ( very rare) or possibly a shower.
I don't know of any domestic or camper van cases

Not quite, it's not so much an air con system, it is any process cooled by a cooling tower, and then it has to be a really badly maintained cooling tower. The risk isn't from the air in the air con system it is from aerosols directly produced by the operation of the tower itself so you have to be in the vicinity of the cooling tower to breath it in. There is no risk to people inside the building from the air being circulated by the air con system.

[winchman]

I should have explained my self better.
Remember the mobile office type conditioners, you filled a sump with water and it was pumped over a cooling coil like a mini water tower, these are not good unless maintained correctly.