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Apologies for not very clear title. I have noticed a marked decline in the quality of my water ooer missus before anyone else gets in there - but I mean from the boats tank. In so far as, even after going through my filter jug, tea now has a very mottled scum on top (even when jug filter is new) and also some little black bits are gathering in the aforementioned water jug filter. I inspected one black bit and it was hard and crumbled like say a spec of charcoal. Not a soggy mould.

I thought of filling and emptying the tank to flush it - but that is basically what happens with each fill cycle isn't it? I'm sure I'm missing something.

It is a stainless steel 500l tank, and there is a filter before the pump which I have yet to inspect. Another issue is my water gauge is unreliable now, favouring a "tank half full" situation much of the time.

I think I'll stick to beer for now but it works out expensive in the shower :)

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Check the water coming out of the standpipe

 

Check the water coming out of the hose pipe.

 

Check the water coming out of the tank

 

Check the water coming out of the pump.

 

Check the water at each outlet.

 

Check your filter jug.

 

Change your Tea Bags

 

Then you will know who the culprit is.Clean offending item, or whole system appropriately.

 

Sorted

Edited by rusty69
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Like proper fault finding! Thought it might have been some kind of known phenomenon - an equivalent of diesel bug but for water, if you will.

Actually - it could be that old bit of garden hose...

Edited by Johny London
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24 minutes ago, Johny London said:

 

I thought of filling and emptying the tank to flush it - but that is basically what happens with each fill cycle isn't it? 

Not unless you drain the tank completely every time before you take on water. Even then, the tank outlet is probably a little above the bottom of the tank. So inevitably some water, and any crud, remains in the tank from one fill to the next.

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42 minutes ago, Johny London said:

No jokes - the hose is one of those ones that flattens itself as you coil it in, maybe the rubber is perishing. When I left my house I just grabbed it as a stop gap and that was two years ago. It was old then!

Run the water through some white cloth then you’ll soon find out

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1 hour ago, Boater Sam said:

Milton the tank once a year, it will be fit to drink then. Filter the bits out, its likely to be your hose or bits from the tap washers you fill from.

So how much do you add to a tank full of water?

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The filter in a filter jug contains activated carbon and sometimes little bits escape.  That might explain the ‘carbon’ particle, but not the scum.  If the filter is old you might have some bacteria in it and in this hot weather it will promote growth.  Just some thoughts.

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3 hours ago, Boater Sam said:

Milton the tank once a year, it will be fit to drink then. Filter the bits out, its likely to be your hose or bits from the tap washers you fill from.

I used to use something similar to Milton once a year 

http://www.poundland.co.uk/dr-johnsons-sterilising-fluid-1-litre

However there was some advice that flushing with a full tanks worth of fresh tap water would be sufficient - probably advice from this forum. However for the small cost it is worth a go , leaving the diluted solution in the pipes to do its work. 

 

Check to see if the filler cap has a rubber seal and whether this is perished and allowing rain water to wash dirt into the filler.

The domestic water pump may have  a filter on it - which should be removed and cleaned out as necessary. I dismantled my water pump for repair and  found limescae inside .

What sort of taps do you have ? Could tap valve or washer be breaking up? Does the tap have  a filter in the spout that needs cleaning out ?

 

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On our first long trip we were plagued with sporadicaly uplifting bad tasting water.

So we kept a log with the intention of naming and shaming the offending locations.

After about 5 months the penny dropped - it was our shiny NEW yellow hose ?

When using an ancient yellow hose that had come with the boat, or fixed hoses, then no problems.

Invested in a blue food standards one - no problems since.

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Well a baby's bottle requires a strength of 0.6% so if your water tank holds 500Lt that would be 3 lts unless my maths is a mile out and at that concentration you don't need to rinse it before stuffing it into a baby's mouth so what strength would be required to kill bacteria in a water tank I wouldn't like t guess  

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  • 4 weeks later...

Interesting about sterilising the tank - I did have it in the back of my mind that a pill should be put in once a year - someone had mentioned it to me years ago.

The hose doesn't have a black inner, so don't think it's that. I checked the water filter coming out of the tank - just bits of fluff and muck that you would expect. Yet my water filter jug is accumulating more and more of these hard black bits. I have not noticed them coming from the shower or bathroom sink (though, perhaps I would have missed them) so I'm starting to think it might be either the kitchen tap (ceramic valves breaking up?) or possibly the flexi hoses - they were cheap jack ones that came with the tap but despite buying better ones I ended up having to use them for some reason or other. I'll try filling the water jug off the bathroom for a bit.

Pic attached

 

Debris from Water tap s.jpg

Edited by Johny London
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On 03/07/2018 at 14:27, ditchcrawler said:

Well a baby's bottle requires a strength of 0.6% so if your water tank holds 500Lt that would be 3 lts unless my maths is a mile out and at that concentration you don't need to rinse it before stuffing it into a baby's mouth so what strength would be required to kill bacteria in a water tank I wouldn't like t guess  

According to the MCA, for sterilisation it's 50 parts per million of free chlorine, as opposed to .02 parts per million for drinking water, which works out at  5ml thin bleach to 100 litres water. Run taps until chlorine is smelled, then leave for 24 hours. 

 

It takes 3 or 4 drain and refills afterwards to get rid of the chlorine flavour .

 

Could Johny's black bits be coming from the filter in the jug? The one on Gamebird (Britta) releases similar stuff, especially just after a change of filter.

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I've noticed that the instructions on Miltons and similar products say that it must not be used on stainless steel. I am assuming that they mean not to use it undiluted on s/steel - or am I wrong and it will dissolve my water tank?

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Iain,

I think you've cracked it! Small hard carbon like black bits - of course they must be from the filter itself. There was I thinking how good the filter was doing to save me from all the bad bits and its actually the cause of them! I just took the filter out, shook it upside down for a bit and got similar particles out - unless they had lodged in there from the water, which I doubt. 

And to top it all... what have I been doing? A little bit of economising - these are Wilko filters, not proper brita!

Duh!

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3 hours ago, Johny London said:

(snip)

A little bit of economising - these are Wilko filters, not proper brita!

 

The real Britta ones do the same, but usually just on the first fill. Instructions say fill jug through filter, and chuck the first jugfull.

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Well I was economising on water too - by not throwing away the first two jug fulls. Mind you when I do, I just pour it through, so it wouldn't make any difference as these bits have come up from the filter and stay in the pre filter water section. I've never bothered tipping it upside down to try and rinse out any bits. I thought the idea was just a "straight through" pour to clear out anything that could pass through.

Oh well.

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You don't get these problems drinking the water straight from the tank.....

 

Personally I'd be more worried about bottled water growing stuff in this weather than water from our stainless steel tank. As for filter jugs, I've seen enough green filter jugs to give them as wide a berth as possible!

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