Freshwater - Bad Odor

[flyingfin]

1. Fill and flush several times at dock
2. One day before forecast is for stong winds, fill and add one gallon of clear ammonia. Let sit 24 hour, then run into and across a good wind chop, after about 15 minutes of running and sloshing the tanks, have your mate continue running boat while you open all sink faucets and let your water pump run until both tanks drained.
3. Return to dock and fill both tanks
4. Repeat step 2, but this time use chlorine instead of ammonia
5. Return to dock and fill both tanks, using one cup bleach
6. After one week, run faucets to drain tanks, then fill tanks with dock water. If dock water is from city supply, no further chlorination is needed. If dock water is from private well, contact your pool supply guy to find out how much bleach to add to get 1ppm in your tanks.

Handle bleach and ammonia carefully and wear PPE (long sleeves, gloves and eye protection)

[SeaSon]

Put the filter after the pump. It will act funny otherwise. Also your expansion tank should also be after the pump.

[Jetx]

If there's a shutoff valve for each tank just before the pressure pump, then they're effectively manifolded together right there. So just open the valve for both tanks simultaneously, and there's your crossover. Might be a little slow (only noticeable if you're filling one tank very quickly from the deck fill), but the two tanks should self-level that way.

[Sparks5501]

I am a newbie on the forum. I have a power boat. The water tanks were winterized with RV antifreeze. We emptied the tank and flushed the whole system, including the hot water tank with a tank full of bleach water. Let it sit for a couple of hours, then drain and do the same thing with vinegar. This will remove the bleach from the system. after leaving the vinegar in the system overnight, I flushed again with fresh water. this helped a lot. Got the advise from one of the experts in this forum.

[Shrew]

I appreciate everyone's replies.

I did some bilge spelunking and found part of the issue.

The water deck plate goes to a "T". The deck plate is connected to the top left-hand portion of the "T" (The horizontal part). The vertical portion of the T drops into Tanke #1. Once Tank #1 fills, the water continues out the right-hand side of the horizontal portion of The T and is connected to the second tank. Obviously, both tanks fill at the top.



So there is no way for water to transfer from one tank to the other directly. It fills the first tank, then fills the second tank.

This was the root to problem #1. Previously I could see gunk built up on the inside of the tanks. Adding bleach wasn't fixing the issue. The problem was, when I would pour bleach into the deck plate, it would only drop into tank #1, and would never enter tank #2. Once tank #1 was filled, it would not displace bleach/wter from one. Rather it would simply fill tank #2 with water and no bleach. Inspecting the tanks revealed that the gunk on tank #1 was almost completely cleared up, but tank #2 was the same (I swear it might actually have gotten worse)

There are two shutoffs juts prior to the pressure pump. This meant that only 1.2 of the water coming out of any faucet was treated with bleach.

I closed the valve drawing from tank #2 and only drew from Tank #1. We could quickly see an improvement. Once tank #1 was empty I opened tank #2 and absolutely got the 'air sucking' issue. Closed the valve on the empty tank to resolve that issue as well.

I drained both tanks. I snaked a hose down the deck fill. Based on the T, this bypassed tank #1 and went into tank #2. I then poured bleach down the hose, essentially injecting bleach just into tank #2. I poured some more bleach down the deck plate to fill tank #1 again. I then filled both tanks and shut off tank #2 and let the bleach/water mixture sit for a few days.

After a few days, tank #2 looked MUCH better with very little 'gunk' build up on the inside sides of the tank.

I flushed both tanks and repeated this process a second time. In the meantime, tank #1 has bee doing GREAT. Tank #2 should be clean hopefully this weekend.

I can still see some minor traces of gunk on the inside of the tanks, however I would estimate it is 90-95% cleared up.

I'm a bit concerned about impact of bleach on the hotwater tank.

[Markhunter1097]

Another 2cents worth
When draining the cleaning solution, leave this to sit in the lines to the taps long enough to clean them too
Read Peggie Halls book for all the details on cleaning your tanks once you have sorted your fill issue

I have two 500 litre tanks and one deck fill, they are connected at the bottom and only, seems to work but u do get a small Stb list that I correct by draining the port tank first

I also added a coarse filter and a carbon one, the hunt I get out! Keep a spare coars filter and just rinse old one then reuse, charcoal needs replacing

I put my filters on the tank side of pump and after realised that was wrong, am yet to change but it works anyway