Hot Water Smells Like Chemical Contamination

[RicknBobbie]

After two weeks camping, our hot water has started smelling like it has been contaminated with chemicals. The smell is difficult to describe, something like a cross between plastic and petroleum--the closest thing I can liken it to is when I smelled well water contaminated by a leaking gasoline tank at a gas station, but not nearly as strong.

I have purged all the water from the tank several times, including running it through the overpressure valve. When the water is cold there is no smell, but after heating about 20 minutes, the smell returns. This is true whether we heat with electric or gas.

This campground normally has very good water. I checked at the hose bib, at the discharge side of the water regulator, and at the intake side of the camper--no smell. We use a Clear Source two stage water filter, and we have used our camper about 140 nights since we bought it --2018 2670MK.

I am baffled, but I am hoping someone can help us out.

Thank you in advance.

[sande005]

The usual suspect is Sulphur smell bacteria growing in the nice warm heater. It may be another form of life. If you get the smell by heating cold water on the stove, it's probably the water supply. Otherwise, drain everything - turn off all water, pull the plug on the heater, (not just the bypass) open up the low points, run all faucets/sprayers/toilers until there is no water. Mix up a bleach solution as noted in your manual, and dump it in your fresh tank, and fill. Replug everything and run the bleach water out of everything, hot and cold, using your pump. Not city water.. Let it sit for 4-6 hrs. Redrain everything, and empty your fresh tank. Now hook up your city water, and flush the lines. If everything was drained, it won't take much to flush the residual out.
The heater overpressure can leave up to 6 gallons in the tank, which takes forever to flush as it slowly mixes with fresh.

[RicknBobbie]

Thank you for the reply, I got it fixed.

My last house had a well system and the water had a lot of sulphur in it, so I knew the smell wasn't hydrogen sulfide. Even though I had sanitized the water system two weeks earlier, I did it again and also did a vinegar treatment to the hot water heater. Everything was fine for 1 day and then the problem started again. My shore water was configured with a pressure regulator on the hose bib, a short hose into a Clear Source water filter system, and a Camco Blue water hose going from the filter output to the trailer. I had used this arrangement for the last three years without this problem, and had no reason to suspect that anything had changed.

I then took water samples from each stage of the system, starting with the hose bib and ending with the water going into the trailer. I heated each sample to 158 degrees; only the water coming from the blue Camco hose gave off the smell. In other words, the water leaving the filter was fine, but was being contaminated by the Camco hose. A few minutes later, I repeated the experiment on water from the Camco hose, this time allowing it to flush for a minute before sampling, but it smelled fine, even after heating it. My surmise was that only water which lingered in the hose absorbed the contaminant, so I let it sit over night and took a sample first thing in the morning--the same smell was present after heating.

I ordered some new hoses to be delivered to the campground. In the mean time, I reworked the shore water configuration, putting the Clear Source filter AFTER the Camco blue hose, and just before the trailer fill connection. The problem went away (which I might add is a great testimony to how well the Clear Source filtration system works.)

One thing which had puzzled and alarmed me was that the chemical smell would migrate to the cold water side of the water line, after sitting over night. This didn't seem to make much sense. When treating the hot water tank with vinegar, I turned off the shore water. After the treatment, while I was waiting for the tank to cool down some (forgetting that I had turned off the shore water,) I turned on the COLD water but got HOT water from the cold water valve; this was true for the sink, lavatory and for the shower. Somehow, hot water is able to migrate to the cold water line in certain circumstances; I could see how this might happen with a univalve system, but the shower and lavatory both have discrete h/w and c/w valves. I checked the hot water bypass valve, and it was completely shut, so this one has got me stumped.

At any rate, the problem is fixed, due in no small part to Sande005 advising me to heat a sample on the stove.

I appreciate this forum and the willingness of others to help a fellow camper solve a problem.

[sande005]

Dang, that makes me sad. I just bought a blue Camco early this spring!

From my days in restaurants, and managing food trucks, my Health Department guy was adamant that we only use hoses that are certified by NSF. But those are hard to find - manufacturers don't want to pay the testing fees. Most say "food or drinking water safe", but there is nothing to back up the claim. Such is the case in point - plasticizers, etc. that can dissolve in the water...