Water Testing

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Doineann

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I have just bought a new boat to me.

I was wondering if it is possible to get the water in the tanks tested to find if it is safely drinkable, and if so where. The previous owner appears to have all the gear to keep it purified, but no filters, and of course you never know what has actually been done.

I assume just emptying the tanks and re filling will not work, but maybe I am wrong. I do not want to have to go through a full clean out if it is not necessary
 
Flush the tanks a few times, then fill them again adding either bleach or water treatment tablets. If you use bleach, buy the very cheapest thin bleach, without additives. Pump a little water out, so that the pipework also has treated water in it. Leave for 24 hours, then flush a few times.
 
empty the tanks, and try and get a visual inspection if at all possible.

Likely mucky areas are in fact the pipework and tap gubbins.

Pop in a couple of Milton tabs for a shock dose, fill tanks and flush to taps. Leave it for 24 hours then empty.

If you get lots of mucky bits you have a more serious cleaning problem.

Empty tank and repeat if you wish. Milton tabs are probably the easiest way, but other methods include the use of hydrogen peroxide and silver solutions for non-acidic use, and lack of chloriney taste. I am not terribly keen on the use of bleach though it's cheap and accessible.
 
Be useful to know what type of tank we're talking about , grp , stainless or the bag type , if it's a bag just chuck it away and get a new one , I did , otherwise as others have said a few Milton tabs should suffice , also consider fitting a filter ...
 
I changed boats this year. Water that was in the tanks smelt and (cautiously) tasted fine. So I drained the tanks, re-filled adding Aquasol liquid treatment which is what I've used now for quite a few years, and we've been drinking it all season, no problems at all. So I'd say do a smell and taste test first of all.
 
I suppose you are all right, but with full tanks that carry 100 Gallons I was trying to avoid having to empty them! It just struck me that there may be a health department who may do a test for a few quid and save me the effort.

Laziness on my part really.

Thanks anyway.
 
Doineann said:
I suppose you are all right, but with full tanks that carry 100 Gallons I was trying to avoid having to empty them! It just struck me that there may be a health department who may do a test for a few quid and save me the effort.

Laziness on my part really.

Thanks anyway.
Click to expand...

I read somewhere recently that if you leave a glass of water from your tank with a sugar cube in it overnight, if it remains clear good water and if cloudy dodgy water, I'm not sure I'd trust that to much but it was in one of those skippers tips booklets from YM. :disgust:
 
Doineann said:
I suppose you are all right, but with full tanks that carry 100 Gallons I was trying to avoid having to empty them! It just struck me that there may be a health department who may do a test for a few quid and save me the effort.

Laziness on my part really.

Thanks anyway.
Click to expand...

How long has the water been in the tanks? How long has the boat been for sale? Gladys has 60 gall stainless water tanks, and I dose them with Puriclean powder (mixed with water in a 2 gall container) and flush per the instructions, but I have a General Ecology drinking water filter...
 
Gladys said:
How long has the water been in the tanks? How long has the boat been for sale? Gladys has 60 gall stainless water tanks, and I dose them with Puriclean powder (mixed with water in a 2 gall container) and flush per the instructions, but I have a General Ecology drinking water filter...
Click to expand...

That is part of the problem, I don’t really know.

She is a 1999 Dehler 41CR that I bought in Holland off of a German, she is in very good condition and the previous owner didn’t seem to skimp on anything. The water tastes OK and doesn’t smell, so my guess is it is fine.

He had a networked Open CPN system which I think is telling me the last journey he really did was for a week in early 2015 but it is all in German so I may not have got that fully right

Thinking about it I suppose I ought to change my Forum name to Caerulea, her new name. She was called ‘Nika’ before but you can see what is going to happen to that name in the club bar!
 
Water testing laboratory would be your best bet if you really wanted to pursue it, they could also do the micro analysis if required. They will be able to advise on the best service for you.
If they don't take private work on, drop me a pm and I can subcontract it through our lab'
Likely to be fairly expensive though.

http://www.scientific.services/

I had a similar problem with our "new" boat, a 1989 model that hadn't moved for 2 Years (plastic tank)
With a capacity of 550 litres, I didn't really want to fill it, then drain it just to clean it.
After a couple of half fills, the water still looked OK so I've been using it as is (without issue)
 
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My tanks are both stainless and as far as i can tell the boat wasn't used much, if at all, in the three years before we bought her. I filled the tanks, looked at a glass of water, tasted it, it looked and tasted ok so i just drink it. Straight from the taps, no filters, on sterilizing of the tanks, no bouts of sudden death syndrome.
 
There will be bugs in your tank. Don't waste £200 on finding out, just treat the system as if you know you have them. Bleach is sodium hypochlorite and is one of the best ways of getting cleansing levels of chlorine into a system.
This is what I do and would recommend.
Pour some thin bleach into the filler hose trying to get as much around the internal pipe work as possible. Sponge the cap with a 1:4 mix of thin bleach/water, then spray some water into the filler to help distribute the bleach solution around the inside of the pipe. Leave for an hour or so with the inside of the cap exposed to the sun (if possible - UV light is bad for bacteria) and fill the tank with a mix of 1:80 bleach / water (1 cup bleach to 10 litres water (or so)). Don't make the bleach solution too strong - or leave it too long - as chlorine is not too good for EPDM. Open up and dose filters, tap heads etc. in the same way as with the filler cap. The nooks and crannies are where the bugs will be.
Run the system slowly and intermittently, opening and closing valves and taps to get the solution into all those internal nooks and crannies. Do this with the pump on and off.
Top up the tank with the same strength solution as high as possible and leave for a couple of hours and drain the system.
The key thing with chlorine is that if there is a smell/taste of it in the water, then there are no bugs. If you can not smell/taste it, there may still be some there so repeat the above if you feel necessary. If you suspect that there is much 'fouling' of the tank to start with then increase the start dosing from 1:80 to perhaps 1:50.
Be sure to rinse the system out afterwards, but don't worry about a slight chlorine tang, there should always be residual chlorine in mains potable water. My sense of smell is poor so, if I can not smell it, and Mrs. can, then I know we're safe to go!
 
Chalk said:
The key thing with chlorine is that if there is a smell/taste of it in the water, then there are no bugs. If you can not smell/taste it, there may still be some there so repeat the above if you feel necessary. If you suspect that there is much 'fouling' of the tank to start with then increase the start dosing from 1:80 to perhaps 1:50.
Be sure to rinse the system out afterwards, but don't worry about a slight chlorine tang, there should always be residual chlorine in mains potable water. My sense of smell is poor so, if I can not smell it, and Mrs. can, then I know we're safe to go!
Click to expand...

Interesting, When I use Puriclean powder at the start of every season, there's always a chlorine smell and taste until the second fresh fill...
 
You should be fine then - the first clean is a high dose, then the potable water fills the tank. Just because there is no chlorine smell doesn't mean there are bugs, just that if there is, there aren't. Marina water is often towards the end of the water company's line. Potable water standard is no more than 2ppm chlorine. That concentration reduces the further one gets from the dosing plant, so at the end of the line it often is not detectable. I normally can not detect it in most mains water.
 
Murv, thanks for the offer, but it seems that as to testing
(a) Its too expensive
(b) Best off just biting the bullet and cleaning the tanks as suggested.
Thanks to everyone about the advice, I shall take it all on board.
I was actually getting quite used to all the German on the boat - I htink SWMBO and I shall always now refer to the Pole up halyard as the 'topnant' and the domestic batteries as the bordnetz, but I will turn CPN onto English

hey ho. There are worse things to do than turning the taps on I suppose
 
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