Cleaning interior of water tanks

[Arthurc]

I need to open up my tanks to check the gauges and also fix a small drop in the drain plug. When I do that I figured I would give them a light cleaning/flush. What products do you recommend for that? Also anything I should check/do while they are all open? My plan is to have the watermaker installed shortly and then only feed them from it once done.

Thanks
Arthur

 

[C lectric]

What are the tanks made of?

 

[Arthurc]

Stainless steel

 

[Tom.B]

In our old boat, our tanks were under the master bed with 8" access panels. It was a breeze and we only used a hose with a sprayer and a hand-operated bilge pump. If I were to use anything, maybe just water with a few caps of bleach as a bacterial killer, but that would be about it.

Our current tank doesn't have an access port... YET! But it will in the near future. Still, I have peeked into them via the fill and level sensor holes, and it looks pretty clean for 18 years.

 

[Larry M]

We had ss tanks with 8” inspection ports on our last boat. I’d run the tanks down and use a shop vac to get any chunks out. The inspection ports were aluminum and we’d get some type of oxide that would fall off from the inside of the lids. That was it. We never had any growth on the inside of the tanks.

 

[HopCar]

If you have good access to the interior walls of the tank, scrub them with a mild bleach solution. The bleach will kill the biofilm that forms on the walls and scrubbing will take it off so you can flush it out.

If you can’t scrub the walls I recommend treating the tank with Puriclean. It will not only kill the biofilm but cause it to release from the tank walls. It is much more effective than just soaking the tank in bleach.

Puriclean can be ordered in the US from my old company, Hopkins Carter.

Clean Tabs Ltd | Water Purification | Water Purification Tablets | Water Tank Cleaning | Water Treatment | Drinking Water Disinfection

 

[Arthurc]

I have giant access ports so I think scrubbing should be doable and in terms of emptying them I have a drain plug that goes right into a super clean bilge so will likely drain that way otherwise 600gal could take a while
Will open one up this weekend and see what I find...