Anyone who thinks they can just toss chlorine in their pool and walk away… will come back to a green, nasty or otherwise unusable pool — and need to spend a fair amount of money on chemicals to make the water clear (and/or safe!).

Of all the methods out there, Pool Test Strips offer the quickest and easiest testing solutions. Some people doubt the accuracy of test strips, sure, but test strips have come a LONG way in recent years.

Pool Check TDS Strips

Looking for a pool test kit w/ a bit more… chemistry to it? No problem. ‘Old School’ wet chemistry test kits that use liquids still exist. The most basic ones use OTO (for total chlorine testing) and a chemical called phenol red for pH testing.

More advanced liquid pool testing kits will use both those chemicals, maybe, and others to test for chlorine (free & total), bromine, pH, alkalinity, calcium hardness, etc. The more pool water parameters you test for, the easier a time you will have keeping your pool water clean, clear and safe!

If you catch a pool water problem early on you have an opportunity to correct it BEFORE it gets out of hand, your water turns green (or black!), and you wind up spending money on extra chlorine, extra algaecides, and possibly other things.

Since we started this site we have gotten TONS of questions sounding very much like, “Which test kit should we trust?” and today we’d like to share some actual feedback from FilterWater.Com customers who have both purchased and used a test kit we talk about quite often on … the Water Quality Test Kit from the makers of SenSafe and WaterSafe test kits.

Rebeka on 4/7/2011, said: “I was skeptical at first that a product would be able to tell me something that I thought I would have to pay a professional to test. To my amazement this water test kit worked very well for me with fast and accurate results. I’m very satisfied with the product, it was very easy to use.” ( source )

So… What does the Water Quality Test Kit test for? So glad you asked!

• Free Chlorine – 2 tests
• Total Chlorine – 2 tests
• Chloride – 2 tests
• pH – 2 tests
• Total Alkalinity – 2 tests
• Total Hardness – 2 tests
• Nitrate – 2 tests
• Nitrite – 2 tests
• Iron – 2 tests
• Sulfate – 2 tests
• Hydrogen Sulfide – 2 tests
• Copper – 2 tests
• Lead – 1 test
• Pesticide – 1 test
• Bacteria – 1 test

We did say that we would provide you with feedback from more than one user, so here you go:

Michelle on 1/27/2011, said: “This water quality test kit is a great product that I would recommend to anyone. I’m in the real-estate market, and some places I show my clients have less than desirable water. This kit is an easy way for my clients to find out what they are getting into as far as there water source goes. My clients and I have found this kit very helpful and I will continue using them. A+” ( source )

So there you have actual testimonials from real people about the benefits offered by the Water Quality Test Kit. Now can you see why all of us here at Water Testing Blog like that kit so much?

For a little over 30 bucks you can test your water for 12 drinking water parameters two times and lead, pesticides (atrazine & simazine) and coliform bacteria once.

Does this test kit take the place of laboratory testing?

No, no, no, and NO. Home drinking water test kits work well as a means of performing on-the-spot testing between laboratory tests. Not at-home drinking water test kit which has the user interpret the results takes the place of water testing performed by a certified, qualified water testing lab.

Each year millions of pool owners will venture out into their sheds, begin to rummage through boxes marked ‘pool stuff’ in their garages, etc. and come up empty handed. What did they go looking for? Their simple, trusted 2-way pool water test kit.

Where did all those test kits go? No one really knows, but some have hypothesized that an alien race of testing gnomes creeps out in the off season and harvests a select number of 2-way test kits that they will sacrifice to the Pool Gods on our behalf in exchange for a bountiful, fun and safe swimming season.

Regardless of whether or not that last bit sounded believable, if you find yourself in need of a 2-way pool water test kit for total chlorine and pH, sites like InTheSwim.Com and PoolCenter.Com carry those and more.

Now… if you want to take BETTER care of your pool water — and possibly save yourself numerous water chemistry headaches which cost money to correct — you may want to consider taking a look at a 4-way pool test kit or more advanced Taylor Test Kit.

Taylor K2005C Pool Water Test Kit

As warmer weather creeps into town (for most of us in the US) the plans for Summer travel have begun forming and THIS year some of you lucky readers may finally find an answer to horrible tasting water in you RV and/or Summer home… providing you have stumbled upon this brief article about portable water filters for use on-the-go.

Interested in removing potential contaminants from your travel-time faucets? We’ve found a device that may come in handy. The Countertop Portable Water Filter touts itself as “ideal for those on the go! Whether taking your family on vacation or going on a business trip, you can enjoy safe and great tasting water anywhere.”

Making use of four separate filter stages to remove unwanted contaminants, the Countertop Portable Water Filter from Crystal Quest claims to remove (or significantly reduce) contaminants including such things as silt, sediment, cyst (Giardia, Cryptosporidium), sand, rust, dirt, chlorine, iron, hydrogen sulfide, lead, mercury, copper, nickel, chromium, cadmium, aluminum, copper, zinc, organic contaminants, such as chlorine (99.9%), chemicals linked to cancer (THM’s, benzene) pesticides, herbicides, insecticides, volatile organic compounds (VOC’s), PCB’s, MTBE’s, and many others.

How could a portable unit like the accomplish all those tasks?

Simple: Use ion exchange resin that meets standard NSF/ANSI 61 & 42 and bears the WQA Seal. Then, use GAC (granular activated carbon) and KDF filtration media that meets standard NSF/ANSI 42… and throw in pre and post one micron pads from ISO 9001 approved manufacturers for good measure.

Our opinion? For well under $100 this device should make a great addition to any Summer fun location whose water could use a little… improvement.

How can you tell if your Summer fun spot’s water could use a little improvement?

Simple: Test the water. Did we REALLY have to tell you that?

We may have addressed this matter in the past, but we would rather repeat ourselves a dozen times on a topic like this than have people not properly disinfecting their wells.

Today’s inquiry comes from ‘DdavidD’ who asked, “Hi hope you can hlep. We got a well bleach kit from the hardware store to clean our well and want o know how we know when enough has been added. Directions tell us to test but what do we test with? Thanks”

Most kits for disinfecting a well contain instructions for properly using their contents and we HIGHLY suggest that you follow the darn things — else risk using too little and not getting the job done or adding too much and risk damaging your well equipment.

Most kits will recommend maintaining levels of free chlorine much higher than any DPD Reagent Based Water Test Kit can possibly detect without messy dilutions which, if not done carefully, can easily result in flawed free chlorine readings.

So… how can a person test for 20, 50 or even 100+ ppm free chlorine? Simple: SenSafe/WaterWorks manufactures a product called High Range Free Chlorine which can detect up to 120 ppm free chlorine in just a few minutes without the user needing to mix chemicals or perform dilutions.

If you need to test for even HIGHER levels of free chlorine than 120 ppm, then we suggest you take a look at the Ultra High Range II Free Chlorine Test Strips contained in the Childcare Sanitizer/Disinfectant Water Test Kit.

Don’t let the word ‘childcare’ in the name fool you. The makers of this ultra high range free chlorine test strip designed it specifically for use in average tap/well water that contains super high levels of free chlorine — up to 2,000 parts per million free chlorine!

Detect Up to 2,000 ppm Free Chlorine w/ a Test Strip!

No matter how many times we talk about this topic, we know we will always find another reason to bring it up again. This time a reader named ‘Georgia1969′ had a question about the safety of the water currently in her well… that had apparently become flooded as warmer weather melted some snow in her area and caused flooding in her yard.

“Spring has treated us bad this year, tho I guess we have gotten lucky in past years since other neighbors have gotten it far worse than us in past years than we did. So anyways our well got covered under water that came in our yard this year. Did that hurt our well? Should it get tested? For what?”

First thing we can tell you… call your local health department and ask them if they plan on setting up any free or reduced rate water testing services. If not, then definitely call a certified water testing laboratory in your area and have them come out and perform testing on the water coming out of your well — before you drink a single drop of the water it produces!

It takes only a tiny breach in the well casing or at the top of the well to allow potentially harmful contaminants into your water supply. Also, and this thought often gets overlooked by well owners, what if your well didn’t have ‘problems’ but your neighbor’s well did? Can contaminants creep down their well shaft and get into the water supply you both share?

We would guess that would all depend on what sort of ‘problems’ your neighbor encountered… and we would also err on the side of caution and have our well water tested as a precautionary measure.

What do well owners commonly test for in their water?

In no particular order, and by no means a complete list, many well owners test for potential well/drinking water contaminants such as:

• Heavy Metals like lead, chromium and mercury frequently make the list due to the fact that science has long since established the risks associated with prolonged consumption of and/or exposure to heavy metals.

• Arsenic also ranks highly amongst the things well owners will test for on a regular basis. Changes in aquifer levels can have dramatic effects on the amounts of arsenic found in well water depending upon where a person lives.

  If interested in testing your own water for arsenic contamination, take a look at the arsenic test kits manufactured by SenSafe, a brand used by State, Local and Federal Governments as well as disaster relief organizations around the world.

• Commonly used Pesticides such as atrazine and simazine can easily find their way into flood waters and into a person’s well.

• Let us not forget our always hazardous friend named Bacteria who lurks around every corner and thrives in flood waters. Think of it this way: All the animals in your neighborhood go to the bathroom outside and all that waste gets swept up in flood waters…. only to later get deposited on everything those waters touched.

  As a matter of fact, water experts suggest testing one’s well for bacteria at least once a year, and preferably more often than that — regardless of whether or not flooding has occurred.

• Though a lot more common in rural settings, Nitrates and Nitrites can creep into pretty much any well water source under the right conditions.

  Homes with pregnant women, infants and/or small children should keep a vigilant eye on nitrate and nitrate levels due to the harm they can cause in developing young bodies. Look up ‘blue baby syndrome’ in Google for more information on this topic.

As we said, that list does not include ALL of the things well owners (should) test for on a regular basis, but it does hit some of the high points. If you want a more comprehensive list, contact your local health department and ask them for the results of recent water testing conducted by State agencies.

Do-it-yourself water test kits for field testing?

In the past we have spoken highly of the Well Driller Standard and Well Driller Master test kits because of the level of convenience they offer an average homeowner who most likely doesn’t want to mess around with a whole bunch of complicated test procedures and potentially not-so-nice testing reagents found in other kits.

Our opinion has not changed. We still feel that for the money, these two test kits make well water testing in the field (i.e. at one’s home) something that everyone can, and should, do regularly.

Do these (or any) home water test kits take the place of testing performed by a certified water testing laboratory? Absolutely not! If in doubt about the quality of your water and/or on a yearly basis we STILL suggest having a lab test one’s well water.

No matter how many ‘new’ and/or ‘innovative’ methods scientists devise to make water safe for drinking, we believe a certain faction in society will still put its trust in the sanitizing effects of free chlorine. This also means we believe a need for chlorine testing will always exist.

As an immediate example of this need, a Water Testing Blog reader named John recently asked, “Hi I am installing a 5000 litre water tank which i intend to add chlorine to and need an inexpensive free chlorine meter could you advise me on what to purchase as this is a new venture for me. Regards,John M.”

Thank you, John, for your question and more importantly for reminding us that we needed to examine the cost of chlorine meters at some of our favorite online merchants: FiltersFast.Com, WaterFilters.Net, FilterWater.Com, IsoPureWater.Comand Test Products.

In no particular order…

• FiltersFast.Com still carries the eXact Micro 7+ Water Testing Meter and they currently sell the basic water quality kit for $200.

  While perusing the site we noticed that FiltersFast.Com appears to carry several of the more commonly used replacement reagentstrip bottles for the eXact Micro 7+ meter: Total Alkalinity, Bromine, Calcium Hardness, Free Chlorine, Total Chlorine, Copper, Ozone, Permanganate, pH.

  eXact Micro 7+ pH Test 486639

  eXact Micro 7+ Copper Test 486632

  eXact Micro 7+ Free Chlorine 486637

  eXact Micro 7+ Total Chlorine 486670

  eXact Micro 7+ Total Alkalinity 486641

  eXact Micro 7+ Calcium Hardness 486629

  We saw no other chlorine testing meters available on the site.

• FilterWater.Com continues to carry the eXact line of water testing meters and currently has three kit versions of the eXact Micro 7+ available: Standard Water Quality for $249, Pool and Spa for $249 and Chlorine Photometer for $229.

  Each kit features the same meter, but comes with a different set of reagentstrip bottles tailored to meet the needs of a specific water testing application/market.

  In addition to the eXact Micro 7+ meter kits, we also noticed that FilterWater.Com also carries a newer eXact meter called the eXact Micro 8 Meter. That meter did not, however, appear to test for chlorine.

• WaterFilters.Net does not appear to carry any chlorine testing meters at this time.

  

• On the IsoPure Water web site we found the Extech (CL200) Exstik Direct Digital Reading Chlorine Meter for around $170.

  According to the description given, the Extech (CL200) Exstik Chlorine Meter provides only Total Chlorine results, provides results in roughly two minutes, detects as little as 0.01 ppm total chlorine, will not give erroneous results due to turbid or cloudy water, stores up to 15 readings, and has USEPA Approval for use as an acceptable method for wastewater compliance monitoring of Total Chlorine.

  We have heard very little about this meter except that it uses dpd tablets which may or may not be unique to the meter: Extech (CL203) Exstik ExTab™ Chlorine Reagent Tablets.

  

  Also on this site we saw the Oakton C301 Chlorine & pH Testing Meter which very closely resembled the second generation of the eXact meter — except in cost.

  If memory serves us correctly, the eXact meters cost around $250 or $300 when they first came out and the Oakton C301 Chlorine & pH Testing Meter costs around $530. We cannot, at this time, explain the price disparity.

  Perhaps if a member of Oakton’s staff stumbles across this posting they will find it in their heart to drop us a quick line and tell us what makes their meter better than the second generation eXact meter and worth the extra money?

• Last but least, we noticed a change that kind of takes us back… TestProducts.Com, one of the web sites for National Safety Products, now seems to carry only one chlorine testing meter and although the meter they carry does have quite an affordable price, we feel folks ought to read the fine print before making a purchase.

  

  National Safety Products now only carries one chlorine testing meter, and that meter costs around $20.

  What? A chlorine testing meter that costs so little?

  Apparently so, friends, but buyer beware! This description for this meter states it requires no chemicals (DPD) and also blatantly says that you will need to calibrate it using another method (i.e. another meter, test strips or a liquid test kit).

  Sorry National Safety Products, but we simply do NOT see the logic in the average person owning a chlorine testing meter that does NOT make use of established, trusted DPD chemistry. ORP (we guess that’s what this meter uses) technology has its place, sure, but usually in better controlled (i.e. professional, regulated, automated) environments than the average homeowner’s water source, well, etc.

And in conclusion…

The USEPA approves of using DPD when testing drinking water and/or wastewater for chlorine content. Therefore, we suggest you invest in a system that uses DPD for free chlorine and/or total chlorine residual testing.

EPA Compliant Meter for Free & Total Chlorine Testing
. . . When Used w/ Reliable, Trusted DPD Chemistry

Today’s question comes from ‘Gordon’ and he had a question about replacement (updated) manuals for ammonia test kits. From the sounds of things the test procedure may have changed and his older manual lacks the added steps for the testing.

Unfortunately, as you will see, Gordon neglected to tell us which ammonia test kit he purchased, though we suspect he has one of the eXact Micro 7+ meters from the makers of SenSafe and WaterWorks water testing products.

I have revision 08/26/09 booklet and have just pouchased some ammonia test kits but my instructions do not cover the use of the added liquid, how can I get an up to date insrtuction booklet.

Thanks

If we guessed correctly, then Gordon needs to take a look at this page because it contains a link to the newest version of the manual for the eXact Micro 7+.

Take a look at page 12 in particular, Gordon. Best of luck in all your water testing adventures!

Every once in a while we get inquiries about the water quality in specific areas or regions of the country. While we wish we could answer every one of those questions in great detail, we just cannot do so — but links off of the EPA’s Safe Water Web Site probably can.

Today’s question comes from Sandy and she asked, “I live in Minnesota. Looking for information as to what’s in our public water supply. Can you recommend a good brand of home test kits for fluoride or other heavy metals?”

We took a quick look at the EPA’s Safe Water Web Site and found that it contained a feature called Safe Drinking Water Search for the State of Minnesota.

On that page you can search for Safe Drinking Water data in the SDWIS database in Envirofacts. You can choose from four possible search options: water system name, county name, population served, and/or system status.

You can access the State of Minnesota’s Drinking Water Program on this page and you will find that organization’s contact information listed below:

Drinking Water Protection Section
Dept. of Health
625 Robert Street North
P.O. Box 64975
St. Paul, MN 55164-0975
Phone: 651-201-4700

Home test kit for metals and fluoride?

A company called Test Country offers a relatively simple test kit for metals and fluoride. Granted you will have to send in the sample to a laboratory for analysis, but not too many other ways exist for homeowners to test for potential drinking water contaminants such as antimony, barium, beryllium, uranium, selenium, fluoride, arsenic, thallium, nickel, copper, iron, manganese, aluminum, zinc, chromium, mercury and lead.

Oh, and the kit also tests the acidity level (pH) of the water sample as well as for any fluoride that may or may not be present in the sample.

Who will perform the water testing?

Glad you asked! These days one has to use caution when selecting a testing service because some ‘water professionals’ lack the official training and credentials to call themselves professionals.

NOT the case with Test Country since they use the services of a CLIA Accredited Laboratory (CLIA ID: 14D0646470, Medical Care Provider No: 148453) that claims to performed millions of comprehensive drinking water tests since 1972.

What if I don’t know how to read the report?

Don’t worry. The Test Country Lab Report won’t blind you with confusing charts, figures and things best left for scientists. Take a look at this sample water test report and see for yourself!

In our last posting we mentioned a relatively new water testing meter called the eXact Micro 8 because of its ability to test for both free dissolved iron and total iron. We since have received a number of emails from our readers asking for more information about the eXact Micro 8.

Below you will find a list of the water quality parameters that this meter will test along w/ the meter’s detection levels for each parameter.

Testing Capabilities of the eXact Micro 8 Meter

While this meter seems to offer tremendous promise for water quality professionals, we do not think it will work well for the average homeowner who will more likely have more of a need to test for things like free & total chlorine, (standard) pH and copper than they would ammonia, cyanide and phosphates.

This meter, we feel, will have a lot more popularity with water and waste water professionals who, we hope, will do their due diligence and test for things like ammonia, cyanide and phosphates in drinking and process water.

So… What meter can the average homeowner use to test drinking water?

If the convenience, repeatability and accuracy of a water testing meter appeals to you, then take a look at the predecessor to the eXact Micro 8: The eXact Micro 7+ Water Testing Meter.

We have yet to find a simpler, more versatile water testing meter than the eXact Micro 7+ Water Testing Meter. It can test for Total Alkalinity, Bromine, Calcium Hardness, Free Chlorine, Total Chlorine, Copper, Ozone, Permanganate, and pH directly — providing you use the correct reagentstrip.

With the use of optional reagentstrips and a conversion-lookup table, the eXact Micro 7+ Meter has the ability to test water for these other parameters, too: Ammonia, Bromine, Chloride/Salt, Chlorine Dioxide, Chromium Hexavalent (Chromium VI), Copper, Cyanuric Acid, Fluoride, Iodine, Iron, Low Range Total Hardness, Manganese, Nitrate, Nitrite, Ozone, Acid pH, Alkali pH, Potassium, Sulfate, Sulfide, and Turbidity.