I’ve been giving this a lot of thought lately and I’ve come to the following conclusions:

I can no longer see the need to add bleach/peroxide when filling up, as the city supply should already be germ free. They treat the water with chlorine before they send it to you and in the proper proportions. It’s already in there. If you add to it you could end up hurting yourself.

When storing water in a tank there is the potential for crap to grow. UV lights are good for dealing with critters if they start growing and regularly shocking the fresh water system (water tank, accumulator, hot water tank, plumbing, fittings) will kill anything in there no matter where in the system it may be living. And you’ve got to filter this dead crap out or you’ll end up drinking or brushing your teeth with them.

Perhaps our focus should be on keeping our fresh water system as clean as possible instead of treating water that has already been treated.

For peace of mind, whether you drink the water or not, is to filter what comes out of the system and have a water testing program in place. Without a testing program you just can’t trust that the water is clean after it comes into contact with the boat, and it is the only way to know for sure whether your water systems are clean and in good shape.