Some have been known to hook a hose to the coach fill valve, pour a cup or so of bleach in the other end of the hose, and hook it to a faucet before turning it on to fill the tank. But when I tried that the bleach and hose lining apparently didn’t like one another, and it took a lot of flushing to get rid of the awful “plastic” taste in the tank water. Maybe it would work for you with no problem since so many owners do it, but I devised another way.
I got an in-line fertilizer injector in the garden section of Lowe’s or Home Depot and rigged it so I could put both bleach and later the follow-up baking soda in the tank. A shutoff valve added at the device means I don’t have to run back and forth to the house spigot (on the other side of the coach) to change anything or check the injector, as it can take several times to flush all the soda through it. A cup or so is fine. It’s best to pre-dissolve the soda first. I usually just rotate the injector up to help drain it. The added valve on the hose end is handy anytime for filling.
Run all taps, shower, toilet, and outside handheld shower with the pump to get bleach and then later soda into them. Be sure to run the hot sides as well as cold. You can smell when the bleach gets to the taps. Let the bleach sit in the rig for a few hours to overnight before dumping the tank and injecting soda while refilling the tank. Run all the plumbing appliances again to flush out the bleach with soda, and let it set overnight; then dump, refill, run devices again and dump the tank again, and you should be good to do a final fill.
You could run a rinse cycle of a Splendide washer if you have one, but since no one drinks that water I’d only do that after fresh water is ready so as to flush any winterizing antifreeze out of the washer. You could also cycle bleach and later soda through any ice maker, but that can be a hassle if you don’t know how to manually cycle it (a hassle even if you do). Otherwise, simply running a few trays of ice through it using fresh water from the sterilized tank should do. Consider changing out the ice maker filter that's next to the water pump. As I recall, you may not want to leave the bleach in the HydroHot longer than overnight as I’m not sure it’s particularly compatible with the copper coils, so remember to turn on the hot water side of faucets and shower when flushing through. But I’ll defer to others here re. the ice maker and HydroHot, as it’s been over 5 years since I’ve had to do all this… hopefully finally this year!😉
If you read the ads in your FMCA magazine, there's now available a device just for this sterilizing operation, and it works similarly to the one I made.
Joel
