Mice in potable water tank

[rvb]

There was a similar thread on Airforums about a year ago. Mouse in water tank. They took the tank out to clean it with a lot of debate on what to do.

You may be able to get the critter out and sanitize the tank and lines, but, every time you turn on the faucet, you will remember there was a dead critter in there! I don't know about Kimber, but my wife would never use the water again.

Replace the tank, flush the lines, and take the Overlander to Burning Man.

[Buttercup]

Originally Posted by Adventure.AS

It would be hard for a mouse to climb the side of my trailer and enter the fresh water fill. I suspect that it would be the same for your MH. Have you considered the possibility that someone sabotaged your tank?

NO!! - I left the fill cap off and the little door wide open. Someone would have to go through a lot of trouble to do that kind of sabotage when they could more easily pour sugar in my gas tank (diesel, wide open fill). Besides, I liv in the boonies - the last person who showed up unannounced in my driveway stepped out of his vehicle and said "Please don't shoot but I need some directions."

[Buttercup]

Originally Posted by uncle_bob

Hi

Take a look at the roof vent for your fresh water tank. Does it still have a "cap" (cover) on it? Running under a low hanging tree is a really good way to take some of the lightweight plastic ones off. Once it's gone, the plastic pipe "stub" makes a fine place for birds to sit. Where birds sit they leave things behind ...

Either way, the vent pipe is something to consider cleaning in a situation like this.

Bob

This tank does not have a roof vent, it is only vented via small plastic tube to a hole next to the fill pipe.

[tin twinki]

If you have an accessible tank and a 6 in. or so flat spot on top you can put in a deck plate, an (access hole). Amazon has them, very nice to have for cleaning and checking a fresh water tank.

[Buttercup]

OK, I mulled it over all night (on night shift). We were ready to go out and get 6 - 5 gallon jugs of water and a pump to provide us water for the 16 days we will be out at Burning man but that solution just doesn't sit well with me. We normally don't drink the water from our tank in the first place - we take bottled with us for a variety of reasons. But we do need to take our weekly shower and mama was not happy with the prospect of doing that out of a bucket if you know what I mean. So, I decided that after I get off work, I would borescope the tank to be sure it was critters. If it wasn't, then I was going to chlorinate it really good and flush it all out with fresh water a couple times to be sure.

I wish I could share the borescope images but there was no way to get them there. Suffice it to say that I saw at least 4 mice in the drained tank. The tank had to come out. But I needed some sleep first.

I woke up at around 1130 and started straight. The process is quite simple actually in the motorhome, remove the bed platform and wood slats and the tank is right there. about 45 minutes after starting the tank was out and on my driveway. There was still a few gallons of water in the tank and as I was moving it around, I could see the shadows of "things" in the tank floating around. I don't really know how many mice there were but it was enough to cause a horrendous stink!!!

I looked inside through the fill connection and you know what they say about not looking in your tank - yeah, its true, you don't want to see whats in there. Living in the boonies, with no nearby neighbors to complain, I dumped the tank and gave it a good mixing up too to be sure the little buggers all got out, which they did not. I filled it with more water, sloshed it around and dumped the last of the critters out of there. They actually flushed out quite easily - there was no need for spatulas, vacuums, grabbers or anything. the suction force of gravity alone was enough to extract them from the tank.

I put 4 cups of bleach in the tank and put about 10 gallons of water and vigorously sloshed it around the inside of the tank and let it sit for several minutes before sloshing again. I repeated this sloshing for a half an hour and dumped the tank. Then I repeated the process all over again with slosh and wait cycles. Then I let the bleach just sit while I cleaned detritus from the screen filter. It was black with slime! I bleached that as well for a half an hour.

I then triple rinsed the tank with just fresh water and it was looking really good!!!! Looked like new practically.

Then I poured the remaining half gallon of bleach back into the tank and took it in to re-install. Once installed, I filled it 1/2 way, checking for leaks. Seeing none, I drained the rest of the water system and started refilling it with the heavily chlorinated water from my squeeky clean tank. There is chlorine sitting in all the pipes and water heater (which I also dumped). I let about half of that water flow through the system. I did maybe 10% flow through the cold circuit and the rest through the hot because I want that tank to get a good dose. That's where it sits now.

I plan to do one more course of hyper-chlorination before flushing and filling one last time. I'm not worried about the water system, i do believe it will be safe for human consumption but we will be using it only for flushing, washing dishes and showering. I'm not going to get a new tank at this time because we simply don't need that much capacity when our black and grey couldn't hold it all and also a larger tank will have water sitting around longer. We just don't really need it.

[NevadaGeo]

The fill door on my trailer had been left open before I bought it, lucky I just had pine needles get in. Glad you got Mr. Tom's tank cleaned out, I was going to suggest looking at making an access door on the top of the tank to shop vac through.
See ya playaside in a week and half!
Do stop by, Airstreameri and What Not will be somewhere near 2:45 and JuJu, unless our PlacerGoddess sends us to D lot....

[rvb]

Pull the water heater drain plug or anode as the case may be and flush it with a small plastic hose attached to a hose (hardware store parts). We got a lot of sand and dirt out of the bottom of my WH that way. There is a couple of inches below the drain that won't empty and you have to stir it up to clean it out.

[kendrick.l.j]

Butter, thank you for sharing your adventure. I bet someone somewhere will have the same or similar event happen and we all now know the rest of the story and the fix.

[xrvr]

You did well. Have a great trip.

[OTRA15]

Ditto -- well done and have a great trip. Thanks for the details.

[Jekerrville]

I am still trying to muse the source of the mouse ingress. Climbing into the fresh water tank is difficult, IMO.

Do you keep water hoses coiled up with thd ends screwed together or just coiled up?

Wonder if your mice were transferred in via water hose? I was raised on a ranch. Learned never to trust a water hose. Visitors sometimes like to stay in them.

Glad you were able to recover use of your system.

FYI WiFi Endoscope Camera ( with grabber attachment and recording software) > $200 [google it]

Have a wonderful trip!

[jdalrymple]

If one ever saw most municipal drinking water plants from the inside, he wouldn't worry much about a dead mouse or two.


Enjoy Burning Man.




Regards,

JD

[Mollysdad]

Great solution!
I cringed at the thought, and I've seen plenty. Access to remove the tank was paramount. Great design!
BTW, inexpensive endoscopes are plentiful these days. USB connection.
https://www.amazon.com/Depstech-Semi...rds=borescopes

[uncle_bob]

Hi

I'd very much wonder about the "root cause" of all this. One random mouse here or there ... ok, I'll buy that. Four mice, that's not random. Mice in the hose I'd buy. Do you "run" your hose before hooking it up to the trailer? If not, it's a *really* good idea (turn on, count to twenty after the first water comes out, turn off, then connect). If you already do so, the mice in the hose part doesn't fit.

I've seen the "run first before using" procedure posted on a number of state park water sources. It's a pretty common thing to do. No harm in using the water to rinse off the outside of the trailer while your flushing things ....

Bob

[OTRA15]

Another good reason to run the hose for a minute or two (if no water shortage issue) is that you purge lead from the water in older copper pipes, due to the lead-based solder used years ago.

[B Wilson]

I am never drinking water again! Only Makers Mark straight !

[EZTOO]

Like others have said, sanitize the system with bleach and drive on... We rarely use our water from the AS tanks and drink bottled water, not that
it is probably any safer, lol...

[Mollysdad]

Originally Posted by Jekerrville

I am still trying to muse the source of the mouse ingress. Climbing into the fresh water tank is difficult, IMO.

I've read if a mouse can get their head in, the body will fit. Roof vent?