Today’s inquiry came to us from ‘Trex99’ who wanted to know about test strips for peroxide: “We just got a house with a pool and the old owners used a water system called ‘Baquacil’ that we know nothing about, but there’s an old bottle of teststrips for peroxide with all the pool stuff. Bottles old and faded. Do we need these for the pool and if yes than do you sell some?”
The Baquacil pool water treatment system uses something called a biguanide in place of traditional pool sanitizers like chlorine or bromine to keep water safe for swimming. In addition to the biguanide this type of pool water treatment system also makes use a ‘shock’ comprised mainly of hydrogen peroxide that pool owners, last we heard, should use once every one or two weeks.
Regarding the matter of whether you need to test for peroxide in your pool, from what we have read that all depends on whether or not you plan to keep (and maintain) a hydrogen peroxide residual in your water or if you plan to shock according to schedule and be done with it.
If you plan to maintain a residual then yes, you will want to own a test kit or test strips for peroxide in water.
As for whether or not we sell a testing product for peroxide, we carry WaterWorks Peroxide Check tests trips that has the following peroxide concentrations on its color chart:0.05, 2.0, 5.0, 10, 25, 50, 100 ppm (mg/L).
In our experience most people using a biguanide pool sanitizer sanitizer system typically do not need to test for peroxide levels in excess of 100 ppm (most peroxide levels get kept around 30ppm or 40ppm) but, if you ever do need to test for higher levels, mix an equal portion of pool water with distilled or deionized water, perform the test per the product’s instructions, and then multiply the detected peroxide level by a factor of two.
