Pool Water Testing Blog

Each year Gremlins sneak into people’s sheds, garages and pool cabanas with one goal in mind: To steal pool test kit reagents! If you, like thousands of other innocent pool owners, have fallen victim to those evil little bastards, the links below will certainly come in handy:

Don’t own a test kit, yet, or need to replace your whole kit? Check out Pool Center’s Pool Test Kits Page for information on some of this year’s best selling pool water test kits.

Oh, and for those in search of a simple dip-n-read test strip for pool water testing, Water Testing Blog now carries the Pool Check 5-in-1 Test Strip and several other test strips for swimming pools.

Have you ever walked out to your pool, smelled the thick odor of chlorine in the air, and had to ask yourself WHY the water still had a green tint to it? If so, the answer may lie not in the amount of chlorine in your water, but rather with the TYPE of chlorine you have in your water.

By type we don’t mean granular/powder chlorine, chlorine sticks, 3″ chlorine tablets, 1″ fast-dissolving chlorine tablets, or liquid chlorine, either… We mean that the pool may have too much ‘combined chlorine’, also referred to as chloramines, and not enough free chlorine in the water.

Granted combined chlorine CAN prevent and kill algae, but it does not perform NEARLY as well as free chlorine, it gives off the nasty ‘chlorine smell’ that most people don’t care for, and in great enough quantities it can cause eye irritation.

Want to prove the existence of too much combined chlorine? No problem. Simply test for free chlorine and total chlorine using your favorite testing method and then subtract the free chlorine value from the total chlorine value. If you get a result greater than 0.2ppm then you should probably use a non-chlorine shock treatment to oxidize both the combined chlorine AND the algae at the same time.

Need a test kit for free and total chlorine?

If you find yourself in need of a test kit for free and total chlorine, you can go with one of three options: Test strips, liquid test kits or meters which use reagents.

• Least Expensive Methods — 6 Way Test Strips from Pool Check, AquaChek or Lamotte

• Traditional Liquid Kit Methods — Taylor Deluxe DPD, Taylor FAS DPD Complete or Basic 4-Way Test Kit.

• Most Accurate, Reliable… and Expensive Methods — eXact Micro 7+ Pool Testing Meter, Lamotte Color Q Pool Testing Meter or Scuba/Scuba Digital Pool testing Meter.

If you already have a testing system, please remember that all reagents have a shelf-life and most reagents should get replaced with the arrival of each swimming season.

We urge folks to replace their test kit reagents at the start of each new season. Now, as one would expect, folks want to know where they can get replacement reagents for their pool water test kits.

At this time we only have listings for replacement reagents to work with Taylor Pool & Spa Test Kits. We will add links to other types of reagents for other types of test kits as we locate them.

Again, we stress that pool water can cause major illnesses in children and adults if not kept properly balanced. Adding chlorine, bromine or any other sanitizer will NOT protect you and your loved ones against infectious diseases if other pool water parameters have drifted out of recommended ranges.