How to put bleach in water tank

[dkoldman]

Originally Posted by Morich

Both chlorine and perox are oxidisers, so I would expect little difference, depending on the dilution. Chlorine is the standard item used in water treatment, while peroxide is preferred for medical, making the chlorine much cheaper but they both do pretty much the same thing and react with organics.
Both would work but I have never seen any RV manual that did not recommend using bleach to sanitize.
If bleach does damage plastic, I would not expect it to be sold and stored in plastic jugs. Perhaps your valves were simply worn out?

Maybe the damage is not with all types of plastics and/or maybe the issue they refer to are with seals o rings etc?

While I get your point, that perhaps I could take and entire 1/2 gallon and pour in my tank and if I do it correctly otherwise, I will never encounter a noticeable issue with any of components installed by the mfg.

To add to your point of not to worry, is that at least in my case with city water fill via water filter, the absolute most I could add would be about 24 ozs of bleach. That is enough for 180 gallons or 3 tanks in my case, but I don't believe it if used that much, and drained it shortly thereafter followed by rinse with fresh water any harm would be done.

But if giving instruction to my wife and others, I would tell them to ALWAYS stay within about 2 to 4 oz / 15 gallons of water in tank. It is the the Mfg guide and recommendation, not an end all

[Morich]

Even full strength bleach at 6% does not hurt our skin unless sensitive, so I see no way a valve would be damaged if we run even straight 6% bleach through it and then fill the tank which would rinse off any bleach on the valve.
To say chlorine damages plastic is totally ignoring facts like the chlorine injector pumps are made of plastic, the reserve is stored in plastic barrels and the amount injected goes through plastic tubing! Plastic is used for chlorine exposure because it does oxidize (rust!) metals like iron and steel.
Pool chlorine is sold in plastic buckets, used in plastic dispensers and used to treat above ground pools with plastic liners!
Just too easy to jump to conclusions without giving things a bit of thought.
You are correct in using near the right estimated amount but it is not something to really worry about. An estimate is still just going to be an estimate, no matter how exactly we measure that estimate. As long as we only use the bleach we can buy off the shelf, it is not going to be much stronger than 6-8% chlorine, even if we filled the tank totally full of bleach!
It would make a mess of the grass if we drained it out there as it does react with organics like grass!

[Naonak]

Fun fact as well, drinking diluted 6% bleach solutions isn't really harmful. If you have ever had well water and had bacteria growth, the recommended treatment is dump a bottle of bleach into the well. You can drink a few ounces of bleach in your 40+ gallon tank without any ill effects. I'm not saying you SHOULD do it, but it won't hurt you.

[Morich]

Originally Posted by Naonak

Fun fact as well, drinking diluted 6% bleach solutions isn't really harmful. If you have ever had well water and had bacteria growth, the recommended treatment is dump a bottle of bleach into the well. You can drink a few ounces of bleach in your 40+ gallon tank without any ill effects. I'm not saying you SHOULD do it, but it won't hurt you.

This well treatment is true but with some small points missed from what the pro does the treatment.
When we get the sulphur smell and taste, we used to believe it was just a "bad well" and live with it but more study shows there is a specific bacteria which live on iron content underground and that leaves wells where there is iron in the ground prone to getting too much of this bacteria and bad water.
Curing the bad water is done by adding bleach down the well casing, waiting 24 hours or so for the bleach to kill lots of the bacteria and then pump water until the bleach smell is gone. When the smell is gone, the assumption is that the bleach is pumped out or diluted enough to be safe to drink again.
The problem is that the bacteria may regrow in a few years and the well needs treated again. There is an area SW of St.Louis which has a lot of iron and it is pretty common to treat wells there.
Drinking too much or too strong bleach will kill the bacteria in your GI tract just the same as too much alcohol and lots of us know how much fun that gets you!!!

[jerichorick]

Here is some interesting reading:

https://science.howstuffworks.com/question189.htm
https://www.tipsbulletin.com/hydroge...-uses-at-home/
From what I read here the hydrogen peroxide seems to be the less harmful of "oxidizers". It is formulated from what we breath and drink--- water and oxygen. Amazing stuff!

[AJMike]

This is one of the jobs that I have not done as often as I know I should. Part of the reason is that we don't drink the water in the freshwater tank (we carry drinking water for that and refill as needed when we travel) and part is because I would normally do this at home and there is the question as to what I should do with the chlorinated water when the tank needs to be drained.

So, if I use a 50ppm solution to sanitize the tank, is it safe to just open the drain and let the solution empty onto the street? Or should I drain it into a house drain somehow?

[Morich]

Chlorine is wonderful stuff in some ways that we need to know about. One is that it will kill organic stuff like grass, fish , etc. if it gets to the creek. But it also gasses off very easily when it get out in open spaces, like around a pool!
So it is not very harmful if we do some thinking to avoid killing our grass and not letting it go quite directly into any body of water that we don't want to do a fish kill. I simply drain where there is no grass and I know it is at least a half mile through the storm drain before it reaches a creek. Since it is a street drain and there is a constant supply of road oil drippings, there is no way that the bleach doesn't react with all those pollutants well before the creek, even if it should get across the yard to that drain.
Here in my area, the ground is so dry that water drained like that rarely gets more than a few feet before drying. If I were concerned about grass, I would not but since grass under the motorhome is not something I want, I'm glad to kill any that might sneak in there! Far less dangerous than any of the herbicides like Roundup ,etc. that I might use otherwise. Kind of on a level with salt but is is not solid and does gas off.
Point to keep in mind is that chlorine is in the water most of us drink and most of us older folks grew up wearing diapers that were washed in chlorine bleach!
The paper diaper generation missed all that stuff their mothers did!
The info we get off the internet has to be sorted very carefully to see who is promoting what and for what reason. But both chlorine and hydrogen perox are items which have very good uses if we use them the right way. Kind of like fire and water, both can hurt you real bad if you don't pay attention but I would not like to try living without both!

[AJMike]

Originally Posted by Morich

Chlorine is wonderful stuff in some ways that we need to know about. One is that it will kill organic stuff like grass, fish , etc. if it gets to the creek. But it also gasses off very easily when it get out in open spaces, like around a pool!
So it is not very harmful if we do some thinking to avoid killing our grass and not letting it go quite directly into any body of water that we don't want to do a fish kill. I simply drain where there is no grass and I know it is at least a half mile through the storm drain before it reaches a creek. Since it is a street drain and there is a constant supply of road oil drippings, there is no way that the bleach doesn't react with all those pollutants well before the creek, even if it should get across the yard to that drain.
Here in my area, the ground is so dry that water drained like that rarely gets more than a few feet before drying. If I were concerned about grass, I would not but since grass under the motorhome is not something I want, I'm glad to kill any that might sneak in there! Far less dangerous than any of the herbicides like Roundup ,etc. that I might use otherwise. Kind of on a level with salt but is is not solid and does gas off.
Point to keep in mind is that chlorine is in the water most of us drink and most of us older folks grew up wearing diapers that were washed in chlorine bleach!
The paper diaper generation missed all that stuff their mothers did!
The info we get off the internet has to be sorted very carefully to see who is promoting what and for what reason. But both chlorine and hydrogen perox are items which have very good uses if we use them the right way. Kind of like fire and water, both can hurt you real bad if you don't pay attention but I would not like to try living without both!

Living here in southern Arizona means there is probably far less grass than almost anywhere else in the US. In fact the front yard of every house on our street has dirt, stones and desert plants as decoration and grass is hard to find anywhere around here.

I was also a bit concerned about whether or not a chlorine mixture would discolor the concrete in our driveway or the asphalt on the streets. Neither would be desirable and is one of the reasons I have been reluctant to do any sanitizing here myself. I could take it to a service place but then I would be paying for something very easy to do and not really know that they even took the time and effort to do the work.

[Morich]

Chlorine can "bleach" the color out of things but it works most on soft stuff like clothing. It is what they use to make tie dyed jeans? I soak wood for fish tanks and it does turn the dark wood an ugly grey color for a while but comes back once it goes in the tank and that is a strong mix as I know it will react with the wood, so I want plenty left to kill anything like fungus or bugs who may crawl into the wood. I use an old plastic water softener brine barrel for my soaking and it is something like a thirty gallon, so I may use a half gallon of bleach just to make sure I have enough and that is when I found it killed grass! I just tipped the barrel and let it run across the grass and it did kill it for several months before it grew back.
I never see it do anything on the garage floor except it gets a lot cleaner than the rest of the floor when I wipe it up. When doing a bleach soak to clean up tanks, I do it in the garage and let the water drain out and down the drive and do not see anything. Since it isn't for drinking, I never really measure the amount but just pour some.
But that is not assured, so a test might be worth doing just to feel right. I might just go with pouring a capful or so where it would not show much and just see how it works out. If the straight 6% bleach doesn't do it, the amount diluted in the tank is safe for sure. I suspect sun bleaching is more likely, though.
Do keep it off your clothing as that is pretty soft stuff and it does makes holes or spots!
Don't splash!
I'm a Missouri guy and think we are kind of brown here but I know it's a long way to the creek around you in most cases!

[Lance]

Getting back to your original question. If you google Camco Hand Pump it should come up with the attached image. It works great for adding bleach to water tank. What I do is mix the amount of bleach I want into a clean 1 gallon plastic bottle and fill the remainder with water. Using the hand siphon pump which comes with the fitting to connect to the fill port I pump this mix into the fresh water tank. Then fill the tank with fresh water and follow whatever method you want to clean tank. Everyone has their own way of doing it. I just wanted to answer your original question on how to get bleach in your tank.
Good luck

[Glesamiz]

Thank you Lance, the problem was not being able to simply funnel the bleach solution into the fill port as it requires pressure to release the check valve. This may be just the answer? I, also, had a question about how to pump water into tank, if a pressurized water source was unavailable and this may be the answer to that question?

Thank you!

[gurroz]

We do a lot of boondocking and carry a couple extra 5 gallon containers of water to add to our supply when needed. We purchased an Sump Pump to transfer the water under pressure.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

When we need to flush our tanks we add bleach to the 5 gallon container, shake it up and transfer it into the holding tank. We then fill the holding tank with water to capacity. By doing this we are not pouring straight bleach into the valve we are poring diluted bleach. At the same time I fill the black tank and add a little Dove dish soap. One it is full I drive the rig 2 or 3 miles to agitate the water. 24 hours later I empty the fresh tank by opening all the faucets and filling the grey tank. Once the grey tank is full I refill the fresh tank with fresh water. Then it's off to the dump station. FYI, we do not drink water from the RV, we carry drinking water with us. Not my choice but keeps DW happy!