Drinking the water from your tank?

We always drink out tank water, no matter where we are; nobody has died from it yet!

Even in Gambia (we tasted the water first) we put into the tank - no problems. The only place we didn't put water in was in a little harbour on Majorca where the harbour master told us not to; otherwise in the tank and drink it.

As for plastic bottles of water - what do you do with empties then; the plastic is of such **** quality it can't even be recylcled! And the carbon footprint of getting it from New Zealand/France/somebodies back garden in Woga Wogaland or where ever the new 'in Place' is it by plane is quite scary for a bottle of trendy water!!

Stick to tank water and do the planet a favour!
 
We have always drunk the tank water on all our boats and in the last 20 years never used any tablets or milton etc. On our new USA boat the tank water tastes fine but in the condo we rented briefly whilst getting sorted to move aboard the water was disgusting and we bought bottled. We did drain the boat tanks and refilled them after we had spent an hour washing the boat down, so the water in the marina pipes had not been sitting there stagnating. That said the new boat has a filter system installed, a domestic Home Depot setup not a marine one and I have no idea if it makes a difference or not. I work on the principle that the sundowner gin will kill any errant bugs anyway.:)
 
We have two 300ltr tanks by TekTanks under our forward stateroom (SWMBO makes me call it that). We always drink straight from the tanks and never put anything in for sterilising and the like. I opened the inspection hatches in both tanks for the first time in 5 years this last winter. All that was in them was a very small amount of very fine sand. I was told it comes from the last stage of water treatment and normally stays in suspension, storage in our tanks of course gives it time to settle out. The tanks themselves were otherwise spotless.
 
We do a bit of both. We have a rigid tank that gets Milton'ed and then we also have a solid plastic camping water container. Our main tank isn't that big and we tend to use a lot of water.
 
Rigid tank and water maker water.
It is nicer than bottled water in a blind taste test we did a year ago. I never put anything in it, but the water is in constant use.
 
Belt & braces for us. Dose the flexible tank with a cheapo. version of Milton [£1 for a litre bottle] in Spring and again in Autumn followed by rinsing but use that water only for washing and teeth cleaning. For drinking and cooking buy 4 new 5l. bottles of water [£1.09 each] each Spring and refill them with tap water when convenient. Used to have a fancy filter on the galley tap but replacementelements cost ca.£25 each and were awkward to fit. Find that the two of us use 5l. of drinking water per day.
 
I drink the tank water - just make sure it "turns over" and that I add nothing to encourage bacteria. The fact that no one is reporting dire tummy bugs from tank water is reassuring !
 
Cantata said:
We drink ours, no problem. No tablets or sterilising, no filter either.
These are rigid tanks.
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+1 Exactly the same. The water we put in the stainless tanks is fine, why shouldn't it be ok to drink?

Mrs M sometimes buys the 17 pence per bottle carbonated water from Tesco, but that's because she mixes it with Elderflower cordial as a soft drink.

But 99% of the time we just drink the water from the tank. We do have a fancy carbon filter (which the previous owner fitted) and I replaced the filter once (when we bought the boat five years ago) and replaced it again last year when it split in the hard frosts.

I suppose I ought to replace it every year...
 
We've drunk the water in our tanks all the way from the UK to Greece. We take care to ensure that the supply taps carry potable water and occasionally dose the tanks with Milton. We filter our drinking water through a Brita water filter. This improves the taste (not that it's particularly bad) and remove any hardness, otherwise our kettle gets furred up within a week.

We're too tight to buy bottled water, too lazy to carry it back to the boat and disgusted at the amount of plastic water bottles floating around in the Med.
 
I use bottled water for drinking. I buy the cheapest still water from Lidl.

It's not so much the fact that tank water is at all iffy, it's the local tap water here in Hamworthy can be disgusting.

An experiment - make a pint or so of ice cubes from your tap water. Put all the ice in a clean glass jug, and let it melt. Examine what's at the bottom of the jug...
 
As with most of the replies when I bought the boat 6 years ago (1000 litres GRP tanks on hull) we flushed it with bleach and have never done that since. We live on board and have picked up water all over the red sea india and SE asia even from barrels delivered on the beach. The kids have never complained and have never been ill. Having said all that we still buy water for drinking and only cook, clean teath, and wash using the tanks. when we did use tank water we filtered it. Coffer and tea taste OK I have noticed on someone else,s boat the coffee taste a bit funny and beleive it is the water that is stored in plastic flexible tanks which are about 5 years old.
 
The flexible tanks on our first boat were about 10 years old when we bought it and were leaking. When we took them out to replace them, we were horrified at the amount of black slime in them - we put in new tanks, but used bottled water on the basis that we did not have time to replace all the pipes as well!

On the new boat, we have religously added Puritabs on every fill and drink the water from the taps. Puritabs don't change the flavour too much and I want to make sure that the tanks don't get into the same state as the old boat! We are probably being too paranoid about it - the boat is in constant use and a tankful seldom lasts more than 3 days.
 
We've generally used bottled water for drinking, tea, coffee and cooking.
We re-used 2 litre spring water bottles.
Our boat was not used enough for the tanks to be beyond reproach, I never found it worth worrying about. Slip a couple of empty bottles in your rucksack when you go ashore, it's easy. Our boat had a convenient place for them right by the kettle.
Crack open a genuine new bottle of sainsbury's spring water if you want to drink a nice glass of water.

If you use your boat every week and turn the water over, it won't be a problem, but getting the tanks clean to the point where I knew I wouldn't have to make excuses to guests never got to the top of the 'to do list'.

On other people's boats, I tend not to drink the water without boiling it, but then I mostly drink tea coffee or beer. I'll usually take a few bottles of mineral water for drinking and offer them around.

It's not a big thing to me, but I thought my views might balance the thread a bit?
 
maby said:
The flexible tanks on our first boat were about 10 years old when we bought it and were leaking. When we took them out to replace them, we were horrified at the amount of black slime in them - we put in new tanks, but used bottled water on the basis that we did not have time to replace all the pipes as well!

On the new boat, we have religously added Puritabs on every fill and drink the water from the taps. Puritabs don't change the flavour too much and I want to make sure that the tanks don't get into the same state as the old boat! We are probably being too paranoid about it - the boat is in constant use and a tankful seldom lasts more than 3 days.
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Puritabs , like Aquatabs and Milton tablets contain sodium dichloroisocyanurate. A source of chlorine.
 
I feel sometimes that we are so concerned with sterility that we now have to be concerned about sterility having lost our natural imunity.

As a youngster I spent my holidays in a small cottage on a farm, no lecky, no mains sewage and no mains water. Our water supply came from the feild drainage system so the only filter it saw was the earth. No one in the family ever had tummy trouble and my father was a doctor and said it was OK.

I use bottled water where we live at the moment for our coffee makers simply because of the calcium content in our water supply. Very chalky where we are.
 
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