With so many news stories surfacing about pool water and/or drinking water not having adequate disinfectant levels many health officials have started pushing for increased testing and they don’t mean testing for chlorine residuals with test strips or liquid test kits which both require testers to match colors to get readings.

Rather than trust test personnel to use established methods of chlorine testing such as the Taylor FAS DPD Test Kit and/or the recently EPA Approved SenSafe Free Chlorine Water Check product, some folks want to remove as much subjectivity from the chlorine testing process as possible… and that means using meters to test chlorine residuals.

One example of a meter that some folks have turned to goes by the name of Extech (CL200) Exstik Direct Digital Reading Chlorine Meter and you can see a picture of that meter to the left.

The Extech CL200 Chlorine Testing Meter tests only for TOTAL chlorine, uses DPD as its reagent, requires roughly 2 minutes for testing, stores up to 15 readings internally, and detects total chlorine levels down to 0.01ppm (mg/L).

Extech, the manufacturer, claims the EPA has deemed the meter, with its associated DPD testing method, acceptable for wastewater compliance monitoring of Total Chlorine.

From what we can see on the IsoPureWater web site, this meter cannot used generic DPD tablets, DPD powder pillows, or DPD liquids designed for 10 mL sample sizes… and that means having fewer shopping options when the time comes to acquire replacement DPD reagents.

Not necessarily a show-stopper by any stretch of the imagination since a pack of 100 DPD reagent tablets for this meter costs under $30.

Definitely keep this meter in mind should you need a fast, compact meter for testing total chlorine levels in water.

NSN:  6630014574027 — Digital Chlorine Analyzer

“RUGGED COLORIMETER WITH ADVANCED OPTICAL SYSTEM THAT ELIMINATES STRAY LIGHT ERROR; DIGITAL READOUT DIRECTLY BETWEEN 0-4 PPM WITH A PLUS/MINUS 2% PHOTOMETRIC ACCURACY; READING STABILITY WITHIN 1% OF FINAL VALUE WITHIN 5 SECONDS; MEETS EPA REQUIREMENTS 330.5 FOR DPD COLORIMETER; DIMENSIONS: 7 IN. BY 5 IN. BY 4.5 IN.”

Alternate Product Suggestions:

• eXact Micro 7+ Water Quality Testing Meter — EPA Compliant for free and total chlorine when used in conjunction with a DPD-based reagent system.  Handheld multi-parameter water quality testing meter.  IP67 waterproof rating and the unit floats. Made from recyclable parts and uses 60% less reagent than devices using 10 mL samples.
• Palintest Chlorometer 1000 Water Quality Testing Meter — Highly portable and EPA Compliant for free and total chlorine when used in conjunction with a DPD-based reagent system.
• Palintest Bromometer Duo Water Quality Testing Meter — Highly portable and EPA Compliant for free and total chlorine when used in conjunction with a DPD-based reagent system.  Also tests for bromine.

Note: We have found that the products suggested above meet or exceed the specifications of the original NSN item.  This does not mean, though, that they may be substituted in place the item on a Government Contract.  We provided the above information as possible sources of water quality testing products for consideration in future Contracts/Bids only.