Safe to fill fresh tank with salty water

Brick55 · 02-18-2023, 08:44 PM

Campground says not potable has salt content in the water

Oldchinahand · 02-18-2023, 10:50 PM

If the park is using it for their restrooms, laundry, etc., I wouldn't be concerned over a few days use as shower and toilet flush except for the water heater. BUT, I'd dump n flush the fresh water system - paying attention to the water heater - at first opportunity.

Fair Winds and Following Seas

**Eagle5** · 02-19-2023, 10:18 AM

Greetings Brick55,
Welcome to the forum.
Eagle5
Is it true that it's unsafe to drink seawater?

Brick55 · 02-19-2023, 03:26 PM

You should never drink saltwater ! That being said I don’t think it’s a good thing to run through your to plumbing

Ray,IN · 02-20-2023, 06:15 PM

If anyone has a salt retention problem or heart trouble salt is to be avoided.Salt is absorbed through the skin, so bathing in salt water is not advised. The simple answer to your question is, yes it is safe to fill your fresh water tank with that water, BUT only if you run your water for consumption through a reverse osmosis unit.
reference:https://waterfilterguru.com/does-rev...s-remove-salt/

**Eagle5** · 02-20-2023, 08:59 PM

A lot of people have told me that I look alot like Chris Elliot, and seeing that he is so darn good looking, I decided to keep-up with his career through the years. Actually, when I first saw this scene from Cabin Boy below, it dawned on me that the crew who set him adrift on that raft in the ocean never answered his question honestly. Who would have figured?
OK - sorry - it is a slow night here in South Bend.

Eagle5

Thirsty? Have some seawater!

Morich · 02-21-2023, 12:58 PM

I view the question of salt water in our holding tanks with a bit of thought on what it is likely to do. One certainly would not want to drink it as they do state it is non potable.
But if not wanting to drink it, I see no reason not to use it for all the other things like showers and flushing stools. There is always the question of what level of salt in the water but most of us don't find swimming in the ocean to be a health hazard. We do get out and it may leave us feeling crusty and we may want to shampoo the hair a bit more but there are few real warnings about swimming in the ocean.
One of the logical reasons the campground is not treating the water to drinking standards is likely to be that it is more difficult and more expensive than simply treating with chlorine bleach. The same reason ocean side cities look at salt water as a last choice for drinking water.

Harm to the RV water system? I do not see this as any big thing to worry about if we use it for a few days or a week and then do the drain and sanitize functions we should do between trips. Those things actually grow slower in salt water than fresh water, so I would assume any time we added non potable we would want to sanitize whether fresh or salt water.
The RV water system has very few metal parts and salt water is not likely to be so corrosive it harms anything in the short term.

golden13 · 03-01-2023, 07:18 PM

Sorry, but you are utterly mistaken. Salt or salt water does NOT get absorbed through the skin, especially not to increase your dietary sodium intake.

**Eagle5** · 03-01-2023, 08:31 PM

It probably is a good idea to sterilize your fresh water pipes after you have loaded-up on a questionable batch of fresh water.
Eagle5

These pipes are clean!

Morich · 03-01-2023, 08:53 PM

I look at salt water hazards as many things we deal with. There are lots of differentlevels of saltwaer. Some we drink routinely if we are the normal person with normal health. Water softeners are often talked as a hazard for folks with heart problems but when we look at eh amount of slat in the softened water, it is nothing at all compared to the sale we get in a can of soup!
So many people do drink the water as the salt level is so low. Sure if we go out and get stranded to the point we drink the salt water from the ocean, we are in bad shape but if we just swim in it and gulp a few mouthfulls, we usually don't see much problem.

There are really much bigger issues than having salt water in our tanks and one of them is if we don't sanitize the tank after storing the RV. THAT can really give you some trouble! Drinking bottled water way after the expiration date can get you the same bugs in your belly!
I've got two grandkids growing up on the beach and they notice our water "feels funny" when they come here as they have grown up spending half their life in the ocean!

BobC · 03-02-2023, 09:09 AM

I would wonder what else is in the water. The salt may be enough in itself to make it non-potable but, since it's clearly not treated, I'd be wary of putting it in my tank. Is it really worth the trouble to flush and sanitize afterward?

Morich · 03-02-2023, 11:28 AM

How mcuh trouble to sanitize is often set by how we each operate andfor us the question was not too much trouble. We often left the RV for several monthes between trips, so the tank and all the lines were suspect for having mold and fungus and all those other little buggers that give our stomach trouble. So we often did a sanitze before each trip but the way we did it was not a big problem.
We added bleach, filled the tank near half and that let it slosh around fully as we drove. For that first drive we did not drink the tank water but had water in the frig. We did use the tank water for bathroom breaks!
But when we reached the first site, we drained the tank and refilled with clean water with a lower bleach/chlorine content, making it safe to drink, etc.
We all have to adapt what we do to make it better for our specific personal choices.