DON'T BLEACH THE WATER COOLER!!!
I'll start by saying that for the past week I've felt that the water out of the cooler tasted "funky". Now, we've changed the bottle twice and it's still tasting funky to me… it could just be the taste of the water here and I could've forgotten how bad it tastes while in the US for a month. Or those filters/seals whatever is inside could be dirty since well we did let water sit for a month when gone! Unfortunately I didn't think to unplug or take the 5 gallon water jug off our water cooler. Sooo it sat for a month turned on with hot/cold spouts just hanging out. My brain told me that it probably needed a clean out.
To be fair I did my research - both of the Consumer Reports Books I have say that bleach is okay to kill the germs. I even did a few google searches and most came up with bleach being the best and then vinegar being second best. In my mind at 6am I was thinking… "Hell this thing hasn't been cleaned in a year - lets bleach the sucker!!!"
Now Bill's saying… "Ummm, Anne why does my oatmeal taste like a swimming pool?"
"Ohhh it's okay honey I just bleached the water cooler, a little bleach never hurt anybody!"
And now I'm saying… "Why the hell did I think bleach was a good idea."
At first I thought - oh it can't be that bad, then I took a water bottle to the gym and as I'm running on the treadmill and I take a drink of water I just about collapsed due to the pool taste in my mouth! For the remaining hour on the treadmill all I could think about was how the heck I was going to get the bleach/chlorine taste out of the cooler.
As soon as I returned from the gym I had to take care of this. First I needed to get the full bottle off the top without spilling the entire thing on the floor. I managed pretty well, enough landed to wash the floor but it's okay, it needs a wash anyways!
Okay now lets put this bottle back on top and not spill…. yep more water all over the floor. And the water still tastes like bleach! I ran a few bowls of water out of it and then I decided to give up for awhile, I'll drink a bottle from the fridge and let this sit for awhile. Maybe Bill can try it out later! ;-)
Lesson learned today - I will never clean out the water cooler in China again and I will never use bleach on a water cooler ever.
Using bleach for cleaning a cooler and other utensils is really good, due to its disinfecting qualities. However, make sure that you use only small amounts of it, because it can be a little difficult to eliminate the odor that seem to stick to the container. As much as possible, rinse it well with water until the smell fades away. Anyway, did you eventually manage to remove the weird taste afterwards?
ReplyDeletePaul Franken @ American Pure Spring Water
I know you wrote this in 2014... but I REALLY wish I had read it before I made the same mistake! I heard hydrogen peroxide neutralizes bleach... going to try it. In my defense the instructions said to use bleach.
ReplyDeleteSadly, I too wish I would have read this before following the instructions. Sigh.
ReplyDelete