water tank

[riverdweller]

We just bought a 76 o'day 32 which sat up for a couple of years..what can we use to clean the water tank? we tried bleach and ran the water through for a good while but now we just get a bleach taste. will vineger or baking soda help? thanks for any help.riverdweller

 

[patrick]

My water tank had salt deposits

all over the inside. It looked like barnacles and after a lively sail, some of it would come loose and show up in the water system. The last straw was when it almost completely plugged the outlet of the tank. I eventually thought the pump was bad and replaced it. It turned out that the supply hose would not leak water out but would leak air into the system because the water supply was mostly blocked. That air would get pumped into the system until the pressure built up. Then it would shut off the pump for a while. Then the air would be absorbed into the water or leak out somewhere and the pump would start again. It is just like it would do if there was a small water leak.Another symptom was that there were tiny particles in the water which you could see when you ran the water after a sail.The 1/2 inch thick salt deposits were only apparent after I cut a cleanout hole into the top of my tank. It is fairly soft and porous stuff and that probably accounts for the residual chlorine taste you are experiencing.My solution is to replace the tank with a plastic one and stop using chlorox bleach. It corrodes water heaters too so even if you replace the aluminum tank, the chlorox is still a bad idea. Someone posted a peroxide cleaning process a while back which should not do this to aluminum.I have not found any practical way to dissolve the aluminum salt deposits but I am looking for one.

 

[habanek]

flush it out

Not sue how your sysytem works, but you need to disconnect the last hose to the pump (either electric or manual) and attach a connector (plastic - get it at Lowes or Home Depot - under a dollar). To the connector, attach a hose equal in lenght to the nearest exit point for the water. After that is done, start to flush the system (maybe 15 minutes or more). After the tank is flushed, reconnect it as before, run the pumps to every faucet and fluch these with fresh water.