SANITIZING YOUR FRESH WATER TANK

SANITIZING YOUR FRESH WATER TANK

Regardless if you winterize your camper, just drain the water for storage, or use the system year round; at some point you will want to sanitize the fresh water system. This may sound tedious but with your Oliver Travel Trailer you can simply use the winterization/boondock port at the rear of the camper and let it do most of the work for you.

If you did winterize your camper, you will want to de-winterize prior to sanitizing the system. Please see De-Winterization for details on how to de-winterize. 
Sanitization can be done at any time but is most often done after pro-longed storage or pro-longed use.

Using Bleach to Sanitize Fresh Water System

  1. Prepare a ½ cup of bleach mixed with one gallon of water and place at rear winterization/boondock port. Fresh Tank Drain Valve
  2. Connect a short piece of water hose, approximately 2-3 feet long to the port and in the gallon jug of bleach solution. 
  3. Check to ensure that the fresh tank drain valve is closed.         
  4. If water pump valves are not already in boondock mode then reconfigure valves accordingly. See diagram under the water pump access panel, in your owner’s manual, on the Oliver forum or online at Oliver University.
  5. Turn the water heater bypass valve to the winterization or bypass mode.
  6. Turn water pump on and let the pump pull the bleach water solution into the fresh tank.
  7. Once all of the solution has been pumped into the fresh water tank, turn the water pump off.
  8. Connect your fresh water hose to the fresh connection port and turn the water on filling the fresh water tank to 100%.
  9. Once the tank is full, let this solution sit in the tank for at least 10 – 15 minutes.
  10. Change the water pump valves to normal mode.
  11. Turn the water pump on and allow to pressurize the system.
  12. Turn on your your kitchen, bath & exterior faucet cold water to pull some of the bleach solution through the fresh water lines. 30 seconds for each faucet is plenty of time.
  13. Open the fresh tank drain valve to allow bleach water to drain from tank.
  14. Once again run water into the fresh water tank to rinse.
  15. After rinsing at least 30 gallons of fresh water through the tank, be sure to close the drain valve.
  16. Congratulations your fresh water system is now sanitized and ready to use.


DO NOT run bleach solution through the water heater. You must bypass the water heater using the bypass valve.