Stinky Faucet Water

[Rvlife]

Pretty sure it’s not a vent problem. When I cup the water in my hand, it’s definitely the water. HOWEVER, why only this faucet? We’ve been on the road three months so it’s not stagnant water. I do think it’s connected to having used the fresh water tank one day when campground water was off. It was a fresh fill of water but tank had not been sterilized. AGAIN, why only the one faucet?

[Fsalmy]

Pretty sure it’s not a vent problem. When I cup the water in my hand, it’s definitely the water. HOWEVER, why only this faucet? We’ve been on the road three months so it’s not stagnant water. I do think it’s connected to having used the fresh water tank one day when campground water was off. It was a fresh fill of water but tank had not been sterilized. AGAIN, why only the one faucet?

Lots of posts about this same issue on the FB Solitude group. I'd say nearly 100% of the posts with just the bathroom sink faucet emitting the odor are associated with the washer outlets needing to be flushed/sanitized. If other faucets are involved, then the water heater seems to be the culprit. In our 312, the bathroom sink faucet was the closest to the washer connections, thus, not very far to bleed back. Flushed the washer connections, odor gone.

[geotex1]

Pretty sure it’s not a vent problem. When I cup the water in my hand, it’s definitely the water. HOWEVER, why only this faucet? We’ve been on the road three months so it’s not stagnant water. I do think it’s connected to having used the fresh water tank one day when campground water was off. It was a fresh fill of water but tank had not been sterilized. AGAIN, why only the one faucet?

To be frank, you need to sterilize the system including the dead leg versus to rationalize some other issue. As many jokes being made, that is the technical jargon for it - dead leg - for a reason as there is so continuous flow. Just what bleeds back when pressure drops. The reason the one faucet is not deep in fluid dynamics either. If you open the bulkhead and look at the plumbing you will find the tees feeding the dead legs are closest to that faucet. Water does stagnate in the dead legs, and of you take on well water its quality degrades faster that treated water as well.

[Rvlife]

Thank you for the shared knowledge and suggestions. It was indeed the cold washer line. When I flushed that line the offensive odor was present.

[Gander32]

One other area that can cause water to stink is the Water Heater (smells like rotten eggs). What happens is you get scale build up inside the Water Heater from hard water and the chemicals combine to give you that rotten egg smell.

You will need to flush out the Water Heater and treat it with Vinegar to help remove the scale build up.

FYI: you can find plenty of instructional videos on cleaning out your RV Water Heater on YouTube.

I just went through the Rotten Egg experience (anaerobic bacteria)! Vinegar flush in the water heater did the trick. I only had the smell in my bathroom sink (hot water side), which it seems the gases accumulated there. From what I read on the subject of Rotten Egg smell, my best guess is my WH got tainted from my glamping on my son's property that is "well water" (even though I filtered the incoming water with a Clear2o filter system). Filling up the WH through the water pressure relief valve port was a little tricky!

[wannabervin]

We've had that same problem in our Solitude, only with the shower. After much thought and experimentation, I isolated it to the shower feed line directly behind the shower head. Smell goes away as soon as that water has been evacuated. I did the sanitization drill...twice, each time leaving it sit overnight. That solved the problem...for about a week. Seems to happen when the shower isn't used on a daily basis. We don't have a washer/dryer prep, so there's no deal leg there. My only solution would be to replace the pex from the shower head back to the next junction. But eyeballing the task, I have no idea how to even start that task. Just living with it for now. Not that big of a deal for us.