Sanitizing ... A Comedy of Errors!!

What better to do on the first day of the new year than sanitize the water system in your RV.  The college football games don't start for a few hours, and after watching the Rose Bowl Parade, I bundled up and started gathering up the necessary tools.

Since there is no fill spigot, it was suggested I fill my attached hose with the bleach mixture, then hook it up to the faucet and turn it on, automatically putting the mixture in the tank.  What a great idea ... but easier said than done!!!  In reading my maintenance manual, it warned against putting straight bleach in the lines (not that it mattered when I thought about it later), so I mixed it with a couple cups of water and poured it in the hose.  There was room enough for about half.  No problem, I hooked it up and turned on the water.  THAT is when things started going downhill!!!

In order for water to go IN the tank, you have to turn the valve to TANK FILL.  A slight oversight on my part ... which began the comedy of errors that continued for about two hours!!  With the valve closed, extremely strong bleach water sprayed all over everything.  I ran to turn the water off, when it dawned on me what the problem was.  So I tried to wash everything off, cleaned up the mess, threw away the soaked roll of paper towels and started again.  I thought I had drained the hose of enough water to hold the remaining bleach, but alas, I got about four ounces in the hose before it filled up.  As soon as I lowered the hose end, a geyser of bleach water came out all over my clothes.  By now, I'm soaking wet, smell of bleach and am laughing like a crazy woman!!

This time I disconnect the hose completely, empty the water and try again.  Eureka!!!  Now to do it one more time to make up for all the bleach on the ground ... except I'm out of bleach!!  I think maybe it will be good for now, but no way did two full cups of bleach make it's way into the tank.  I filled it to capacity, ran all of the inside faucets and let it sit.  Here's the trail of shame ... puddles of bleach water!!

Have you ever gotten straight bleach on your hands?  It is amazingly hard to wash off ... 15 minutes of scrubbing later, my dogs won't come near me without sniffing my hands constantly.  With all that bleach on my GOOD jeans, I had to change clothes and wash everything, hoping the levis didn't disintegrate into shreds.

From here on, it was easy peasy ... drain the tank and refill, run all the inside faucets, change the filter and top off the tank.  One more scratch off my to-do list.  I spent the rest of the day washing the car, waiting for Dish Network to send a signal to my receiver so I have TV and finally settled down to watch some great College Football!!

Here's hoping the NEXT time I sanitize the tank it goes a little better!!!