Stinky water

[Stewartn]

Switched fresh water tanks yesterday from Forward to Aft. New water from aft tank was "smelly" . Ran water for a few minutes and it seemed to to improve, but still there. Looks a might cloudy to me. Both f'wd and aft tanks were shocked w/clorox, added clorox and filled from the same source at launch time. No problem w/f'wd tank. I'm going to shock the aft tank with a cup of clorox, let stand 24 hrs, run it thru pipes, etc., empty and then refill with fresh water from the dock. Any ideas suggestions appreciated. Thx all.

[Roland Gendreau]

Is the problem with the hot and cold , or just the hot?

We recently had some smell from the hot water tank only.... I isolated the tank, drained it a bit, then added a small amount of clorox directly to the hot water tank via the inlet elbow.  Problem solved.

Roland

Gratitude#1183

[Les Luzar]

I generally clean my water tanks with about 1 tsp of bleach per 10 gallons of water. Flush through the system. If the smell persists, you can also try about 1/3 rd cup of vinager in the tank as well.  And then run that through.

[Stu Jackson]

Reply #6  Rotten Egg Odors

http://c34.org/bbs/index.php/topic,5836.0.html

Also get used to using the hot water faucet even when you don't have hot water to keep the water moving through the heater.

[Les Luzar]

If you re-commissison your water tanks with a bleach treatment and drain the water through all your sinks, do you have to worry about burning out the water pumps if you run it constantly? Or, should you run the pumps for 5 minutes and then stop and run again? Or can you run the pump constantly until the rear 43 gallon tank is empty?

[Mike and Joanne Stimmler]

I have run mine continuously to drain both tanks without problems.

[Ron Hill]

Guys : I've post this many times before:

With well water (which most marinas have) I filter the water as it goes into the tank and then we have a small filter (Water Pic) on the faucet so the water is filtered again when it comes out.
Most of the H2S (rotten eggs) smell is caused by the old PVC water hoses.

Even with filtering I add a cap full of bleach to each 25 gallons of new water. 

As Stu mentioned, keep the water moving thru those hoses.

There is a new heavy walled polyester braid reinforced vinyl hose that claims to be tasteless oderless - I don't have any experience with this new hose.

A few thoughts

[lazybone]

Bleach, Bleach, Bleach some Vodka and more Bleach.

Nothing I've done seems to solve the problem.  Nothing seems to help for more than a few weeks. 

When I get the time I will change all my hoses and see if that helps.

In the meantime the only water that enters my mouth is bottled water.

[Mike and Joanne Stimmler]

Lazybone,
Have you tried the procedure is Stu's post #3 above? This is what Peggy Hall recomends and has always worked for me.
Maybe you just need more vodka :-)

[Ron Hill]

Guys : I looked at Peggy's post again and I know of no anode in a Saeward water heater (I believe that it is made for Seaward by Underwood Company).
 
I do know that the inside tank is aluminum (anodized ?), but this tells me NOT to screw around with heavy doses of sodium hypochlorite (bleach) which will tend to disolve aluminum. 
In fact let me quote from the Clorox bottle "prolonged contact with metal my cause pitting"!

There have been numerious articles in the Mainsheet tech notes and posts on this site, that basicaly state - only a small amount of bleach is needed in the water tanks to do the job of disinfecting and eliminating the smells. 

It's still too bad that we lost our spell check here!!   A few thoughts

[Les Luzar]

Ron,
I recall calling Seaward a while back to inquire about whether or not my water heater had an anode. My water heater is a S-600, 6 gallon water heater. Seaward said if the S-600 has a spigot, than there is no anode. If the water heater has a drain plug in the location of the spigot, then there is an anode behind that plug.

Seaward said that it is ok to leave it hot all the time, but it is better to turn off the unit when you leave the boat for the week. Leaving it hot works the unit more, and promotes calcification and more sediment in the bottom of the tank.

[Stu Jackson]

Seaward said that it is ok to leave it hot all the time, but it is better to turn off the unit when you leave the boat for the week. Leaving it hot works the unit more, and promotes calcification and more sediment in the bottom of the tank.

Lez, it could also be they want to sell more heaters.  Why leave it on when the water is already hot?  What's there inside the unit to "work?"

Keep water moving through it and it'll last a long time.

[Les Luzar]

I totally agree that the best thing to do is to keep water moving through the system on an ongoing basis, especially to keep the water fresh, and the water moving through the WH,  and I do this by running both the hot and cold water on a weekly basis. By the way, is it a good idea to flush the water heater by opening the spigot to flush any sediment out from time to time? Or is this not necessary?

Since Seaward told me to turn the water heater off when away from the boat for the week  and I have been doing this. Previously, I always left the circuit on and always had a hot water available. I really don't need the hot water most of the time so I have just been leaving the circuit off now, but I do run the hot water spigot regularly to move the water from the WH. Any thoughts on this?

[Ron Hill]

Les & Guys : When I first got the boat (24+ yrs ago) I used the drain plug to drain the heater for winterization. 
After the water stopped coming out of the drain plug I screw that wing nut back closed.  Then for some unknown reason I decided to connect a hose the HW inlet and blow.
WOE !! to my surprise a LOT of water came out of the outlet.
 
Moral of the story is that the drain outlet is NOT mounted in the lowest part of the water heater!!

A thought

[rmbrown]

I followed Peggy's advice... (Thanks!)... and my water was sweet and fresh in spite of 25 year old plumbing.  After about 6 weeks, however, I cut it on to brush my teeth, took a big gulp and spit it quickly back out!

My water was seriously funky... I drained both tanks and the water never stopped stinking.  I opened the inspection port in my mid-ships tank and it was gross and cloudy in the tank.  When I say gross, I mean if you got it on your hands, your hands smelled until you washed with "fresh" water.  To be clear, this wasn't a hot water heater problem.... wasn't even a tubing problem... this was a funky tank problem!

Any ideas?