TeddyGurl recently asked,

I want to know more about the water parameter tests such as turbidity, pH, chlorine, and calcium.

What is the common testing method that should be done?

Thank you for your question TeddyGurl. We will address each part of your inquiry separately.

Turbidity refers to the level of cloudiness or haziness in a liquid caused by concentrations of small particles, also known as suspended solids. The higher the concentration of these particles, the greater the turbidity of the liquid and more cloudy it appears.

To measure turbidity, one typically uses a meter of some sort. The eXact Water Testing Meter has a detection range of 3 to 580 NTU.

For the record, water with a turbidity reading of around 500 NTU will appear milky to the naked eye and water with a turbidity reading of around 50 NTU will appear cloudy, but still allow light to pass through.

pH refers to the measure of how acidic or basic a solution is. Its scale runs from 0.0 to 14.0 with 7.0 as its neutral (not acidic and not basic) value. Solutions with pH values greater than 7.0 get labeled as basic and solutions with pH values less than 7.0 get labeled as acidic.

To measure pH, one has several options: liquid/powder/tablet based test kits, test strips and electronic meters.

Chlorine gets added to drinking water as a disinfectant (an antimicrobial agent used on non-living objects to eradicate and destroy microorganisms which can cause infection). The United States Environmental Agency has set the Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL) for chlorine at 4.0 ppm (parts per million), or 4.0 mg/L (milligrams per liter).

When testing for chlorine in water, one can choose between liquid/powder/tablet based test kits, test strips and electronic meters.

Calcium has the atomic number of 20 and ranks as the fifth most abundant element in the Earth’s crust. When it comes to drinking water, calcium acts to ‘harden’ the water and so therefore when one measures the hardness of water, one actually measures the calcium (and magnesium to a lesser extent) concentration in the water.

To measure the calcium content in water, one can choose between liquid/powder/tablet based test kits, test strips and electronic meters.

Tony from California asked…

My wife and I just bought a home and although the real estate agent showed us all sorts of confusing paperwork that supposedly proved our tap water passed all sorts of tests we still have our doubts. We want to do some testing ourselves. What are the most commonly tested water parameters? Thank you.

We will answer that question in two ways: 1) We will ask a water testing and filtration dealership; 2) We will look at this site’s history and see what pages people have loaded most often this month.

IsoPure Water replied to our inquiry by listing the top three selling water test strips: SenSafe Free Chlorine, WaterWorks Total Hardness and SenSafe Total Chlorine.

With regard to the most popular postings on Water Testing Blog, in the month of January 2010 more people looked at these blog entries than any others:

• Hardness: Grains per Gallon vs. Parts per Million
• Testing Chlorine Levels: Drinking Water vs. Pool Water
• Your Baby Needs Safe, Clean Drinking Water
• Free Chlorine, Combined Chlorine and Total Chlorine
• Acceptable TDS Meter Readings Do Not Guarantee Safe Drinking Water

Think we’re kidding? Just ask everyone living south of the Mason-Dixon line that has had to put up with a lot more days of below freezing temperatures than they have seen in many years. Then for a more personal look at the damage done by all the cold weather, go and ask the residents of Jackson, Mississippi what the cold weather has done to their town’s water system.

Unusually cold temperatures caused more than 70 city water mains to break over the past week in Jackson, Miss., prompting Gov. Haley Barbour to declare a state of emergency and close state offices on Monday.

Residents of Jackson, the state capital, endured trickling faucets and, in some cases, no running water. Construction crews disrupted traffic to make emergency repairs.

Public schools and many businesses closed after their toilets and sinks stopped working. Mayor Harvey Johnson Jr. urged residents to conserve and boil water, but he could not say when the pipes would be fixed.

“We’ve had 70-plus hours of below-freezing temperatures,” said Chris Mims, a spokesman for the city. “That hasn’t happened in almost 30 years.” ( source )

Residents all over the Southeatern United States had endured temperatures far colder than usual for this time of year and as a result, many people have woken up to busted water lines in their homes. Many dwellings lack the proper amount of insulation required to keep their water pipes from freezing and bursting.

While people cannot do anything about the cold weather, they can do something to try and minimize the damage a broken water line can cause by installing a flood alarm neaar the location where water lines enter their homes. Hearing the alarm go off will give people a chance to keep an already bad situation from getting much, much worse.

Yes, water damage will occur in a situation like this and nothing will stop that from happening. How MUCH damage occurs will depend entirely on how quickly someone shuts off the water coming into the building.

Prevent costly water damage by installing a wireless flood alarm system sensor anywhere water might collect as a result of a mechanical failure such as a washing machine overflowing, accidental flooding caused by pipes freezing and bursting, or a natural disaster such as heavy rains causing the water table to rise and begin seeping into your basement.

A simple and relatively inexpensive investment in a wireless flood alarm system can save you thousands of dollars in the long run.

Note: The base unit of the alarm shown also has the ability to work with other types of sensors designed to detect motion and/or the opening of a window, door, or garage door.

After the Pipes Get Fixed…

Although every situation will vary, pretty much every busted pipes situation will require a purging of water lines in the dwelling after the pipes get fixed and yes, we suggest tesating the water after the purging for things like bacteria, metals, and chlorine levels (if on city water).

Spencer wrote in and asked…

Hello,

I am looking for an all-in-one home test kit that will show ppm levels. I thought I saw a product that was around $30 but now I can’t find the web-site.

Do you have any suggestions?

Thanks,

Spencer

Thank you for your question, Spencer. For the most part all drinking water test kits (worth buying) should the majority of their results in parts per million, with the exception of some tests for metals which report their results in parts per billion. Example: Heavy Metals Check.

Getting to the rest of your question, a brand of home water test kits called WaterSafe manufactures a test kit called the All-in-One and it tests drinking water for the following: Bacteria, Lead, Pesticides (atrazine & Simazine), Iron, Total Chlorine, Total Hardness, pH, and Nitrates/Nitrites.

In our experience the average consumer can pick up the WaterSafe All-in-One Water Test Kit for around $20 from several online vendors including, but not limited to, the following:

• Filters Fast (www.filtersfast.com) — WaterSafe All-in-One Test Kit

• Filter Water (www.filterwater.com) — WaterSafe All-in-One Test Kit

Hopefully we have given you the information you asked for. In the event that you did not mean the WaterSafe All-in-One Water Test Kit specifically, and instead used the term ‘all-in-one’ in a more general manner, you may want to take a look at another brand of home water test kits: SenSafe.

Under the SenSafe brand you will find test kits such as the Drinking Water Quality Test Kit which typically costs a little bit more than the WaterSafe All-in-One Water Test Kit, but tests for additional parameters: Copper, Free Chlorine, Sulfate, Chloride and Hydrogen Sulfide (rotten egg smell).

You can usually find the Drinking Water Quality Test Kit by SenSafe selling online for around $32 to $36 depending upon where you look.

Feel free to contact us again, Spencer, if you have any other water quality testing questions!

Many municipalities add some form of chlorine to disinfect the drinking water they distribute. The USEPA has ruled that municipalities may not distribute water containing greater than 4.0 ppm (parts per million) free or total chlorine. For information on the difference between free and total chlorine please visit this page on our site.

For those looking to find fast, easy ways to test free chlorine levels, total chlorine levels, and/or both, the following test strip kits will come in handy!

While the idea of a shower head changing colors in response to a change in water temperature sounds kind of amusing, we think people ought to consider installing a shower head that will improve the quality of their shower water rather than the lighting in their shower stall.

Again, we find the following ‘technology’ rather cool… but somewhat superficial in the grand scheme of things.

You got your skin burned in the hot shower due to a mistake of turning up the temperature control too high as you couldn’t see the reading on the control knob clearly. So, you’ll need a better gadget that would tell you in a more prominent way that the water is burning hot. Here comes a color changing illuminated shower head, which changes color according to the temperature of the water. When you’re increasing the temperature of the water, the color will change from white when it’s cold, to blue, then purple and finally the hot red.

The color changing illuminated shower head features a temperature-sensitive color-changing LED. The shower head needs neither battery nor external power to run. All it depends is the water that runs through it. Installation is easy, just unscrew your current shower head and screw this one on. ( source )

Really cool looking shower colors may do a lot to set the mood for some things, like, um… Well, never mind that. Let’s just focus on the idea that shower heads designed to remove chlorine, excessive water hardness, or other water impurities make a lot of sense.

Note: WaterSafe makes a test kit to test both chlorine and water hardness. Details here.

Looking for a verstile, lightweight, waterproof water quality testing meter? Need an EPA Compliant testing meter for chlorine testing?

Introducing a new photometer using a patented method and technologies that offer faster, safer, easier, and more precise water testing.
The eXact Micro 7+ offers seven modes which provide direct read capabilities for Total Alkalinity, Bromine, Calcium Hardness, Free Chlorine, Total Chlorine, Copper, Ozone, Permanganate, pH, and % Transmission – which allows for testing of an additional 17 parameters.

The eXact Micro 7+ can measure a total of up to 26 parameters and provides EPA Compliant testing method for both Free & Total Chlorine when used with DPD chemistry.

In need of replacement reagentstrip bottles for your eXact Micro 7+ Water Quality Testing Meter?

We’d like to thank “Trinity” for asking the following question about trihalomethane levels in drinking water:

“In school we recently learned that chlorine added to drinking water by water treatment facilities reacts with organic contaminants in the water and forms harmful compounds called trihalomethanes. Does the EPA have a guidleine which limits the amount of trihalomethanes are considered safe?” — Trinity in Washington

First of all, we want to clarify something in Trinity’s question: Not all forms of chlorine added by water treatment facilities will cause trihalomethanes to form. Adding ‘free chlorine’ to water containing organinc contaminants will result in the formation of thrihalomethanes while adding ‘combined chlorine’, also referred to as chloramines, to water containing organic contaminants will not.

Unsure of the difference between free chlorine and total chlorine? The following Water Testing Blog postings will help:

• Free Chlorine, Combined Chlorine, Total Chlorine
• Free, Combined and Total Chlorine Re-Visited
• Testing Chlorine Levels — Drinking Water vs. Pool Water

Getting back to Trinity’s question, though, prior to 2004 the EPA set the maximum contaminant level (MCL) for trihalomethanes in drinking water at 100 parts per billion (ppb). In 2004 the EPA lowered the MCl for trihalomethanes in drinking water to 80 ppb. ( source )

A Rock Hill, SC company called Industrial Test Systems, Inc. manufactures a water quality test kit which they call the COMPLETE Water Quality Test Kit and several people have asked us for a list of the parameters it can test for.

Before we provide you with the list of items contained by the COMPLETE Water Quality Test Kit, please remember that NO at-home or do-it-yourself water quality test kit will give you a total understanding of your water’s contaminant levels and that only water analysis performed by a certified water testing laboratory will tell the full story.

Consumers should use water quality test kits such as the COMPLETE Water Quality Test Kit and comparable water testing kits such as the SenSafe Water Quality Test Kit and WaterSafe All-in-One Water Test Kit as screening tools only.

COMPLETE Water Quality Test Kit contains: 2 tests for each parameter except bacteria.

• Test for Iron in 2 Minutes
• Test for Copper in 30 Seconds
• Test for Chloride in 40 Seconds
• Test for Nitrate & Nitrite as N in 1 Minute
• Test for pH in 20 Seconds
• Test for Total Alkalinity in 20 Seconds
• Test for Total Chlorine in 20 Seconds
• Test for Total Hardness in 20 Seconds
• Test for Free Chlorine in 10 Seconds
• Test for Sulfate in 40 Seconds
• Test for Hydrogen Sulfide in 30 Seconds
• Test for Coliform Bacteria presence/absence in 48 Hours

You can find the COMPLETE Water Quality Test Kit, and other water quality test kits, available for immediate shipping from online retailers such as FiltersFast.Com and TestProducts.Com.

The majority of public water systems use either free chlorine or combined chlorine (chloramines) to disinfect the water they distribute. End users have the ability to test directly for free chlorine and total chlorine, but not combined chlorine.

Free Chlorine + Combined Chlorine = Total Chlorine

If a person wants to learn the combined chlorine content of water they must first measure the free chlorine total chlorine content and then subtract the free chlorine value from the toal chlorine.

Total Chlorine – Free Chlorine = Combined Chlorine

In the past a person had to measure free chlorine and total chlorine separately. Not a real chore, but still an extra step. Now, however, the WaterWorks^tm 2 Free & Total Chlorine Test Strip allows its users to measure free and total chlorine values at the same time, and with the same test strip.

Accurate Testing:

The free chlorine test area on the WaterWorks^tm 2 Free & Total Chlorine Strip uses the same chemistry found on the patented, USEPA Approved SenSafe Free Chlorine Water Check and the test area for total chlorine uses the patented SenSafe Aperture Technology.

Detection Ranges:

Accurately measures free and total chlorine levels from 0.1ppm up to 5.0ppm.

Testing Time:

Less than a minute.