Which Pool Test Kit Should You Buy?

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And welcome to the Pool Guy Podcast Show.
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In this episode, I'm gonna go over test kits and specifically which test kits would be best for a homeowner versus a pool pro and what would be your everyday test kit out there on your pool route.
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I'll start by saying that for everyday pool use, a reagent test kit is probably the most affordable and the fastest way to get a reading of the pool water, and you know, basically you're wanting to know the free chlorine, the pH, the alkalinity, calcium hard disk, cyanuric acid.
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Those are some basic readings.
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And if you can do this rapidly, all the more better for your pool service.
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For the homeowner, I think a reagent test kit is also a great choice because the reagents last a long time.
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And if you're only using it for one season, the reagents may last you a couple years, depending where you store your test kit.
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So that's also a pretty a pretty important factor with home testing.
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If you just use the test kit once a week or so, you want to make sure that the reagents last a long time.
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I'll touch on the photometers a little bit later, and I think photometers are great for both full service and for homeowners.
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And there are some drawbacks with the photometer, of course, but I'll get into that when I talk about them.
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The professional test kits that I recommend for reagents are the Taylor K2005 or the Taylor FAS-DPD K2006.
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Now these two are the industry standard for test kits.
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The main difference between these two test kits is that the K2006 uses a powder for the free chlorine test, and the K2005 uses a dye-based reagent.
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The K2006 will test free chlorine up to 20 parts per million, whereas the K2005 will test up to 10 parts per million.
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And basically, I wouldn't really say that that's a deal breaker.
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The K2005 is a lot easier, in my opinion, to use because you're just using all reagents and you're not using the powder.
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I just have never really been a big fan of the 2006 because of that powder, and it takes longer for me.
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And I always look for speed when I'm doing the reagent test.
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That's why I have the test kit.
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I want to go fast.
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Now, for the homeowner, getting the K2006 is not a bad idea because you're not really in a super rush out there, and you know, one or two extra minutes is not a deal breaker.
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For the K2005, it's just a much faster and easier test out in the field.
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The region refills are easy to get, and you can get larger refills to fill up the smaller test kit containers.
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So I think for economic reasons, they definitely are Taylor is definitely one of the better region test kits because of the refills, because of how fast it is to do each of the test factors.
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It makes for a great service kit for you and for your employees out there.
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Another popular test kit out there with the Pool Pro and with homeowners is the Poolmaster 5-way test kit.
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This is just a kind of this was an industry standard for a long time for a lot of pool pros because of how fast you can test with this test kit as well.
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And you know, it's it's actually something that a lot of pool pros used in the 90s and early 2000s.
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And then Taylor started making a bigger push for the Pool Pro, and Taylor became much more popular.
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A lot of pros still use the five-way test kit, the OTO and the phenol red for flash testing.
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That's when they just drop it into the pool and see the color change without using a test tube.
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Flash testing, according to Bob Lowry, and proven in his seminars.
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We used to give him, he used to have a fish tank, and then he would have guys flash tests with OTO and phenol red, and no one can actually get the right chemistry reading from even a fish tank, let alone a full-size pool.
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But flash testing is still pretty popular out there in the field, and the OTO and the phenol red are used for this flash testing.
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With this test kit, it does free chlorine, bromine, pH, total alkalinity, and you can also get an acid demand with this.
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Now, this test kit uses OTO, which is a kind of a dye that the brighter the yellow, the higher the free chlorine in the pool.
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The only caution is that the OTO is a carcinogen, so if you're gonna use this kit, I definitely would recommend wearing gloves and not getting the OTO all over your hands and on you because of that reason.
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So it's a basic test kit, and for a homeowner, this is not a bad test kit either, because you are getting some basic chemistry readings.
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It's like 20 bucks on Amazon, so it's actually a really affordable test kit, and it's got 9,471 reviews, so it's a pretty popular, easy-to-use reagent test kit.
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I wouldn't say I'm against it, it's just that the Taylor kit is probably much more useful as far as the readings it gives you.
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It also gives you calcium hardness and cyanuric acid.
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Or this test kit just tests basically your free chlorine, your pH, and your alkalinity, and that's that's about as far as this test kit will go.
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But it is again popular because it is fast and it is easy to use.
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Let me transition here into the photometers, which I really like.
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They're a lot slower to use.
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Most of these photometers use tablets now.
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Some use the combination of tablets and reagents, but a lot of them are moving to the tablets for one main reason, and that is that the tablets have a very long shelf life.
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So for a homeowner using a photometer, it's definitely a great choice because the reagents are in a tablet form, pre-measured, and they should last two or three years in the in the tablet form.
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They do have again a hybrid with some reagents and some tablets to give the give it a longer shelf life and to make testing more accurate.
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The tablets are pre-measured so that each one is an accurate amount of reagent in the photometer test tube.
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So you're gonna get a very accurate reading.
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You don't have to rely on counting the drops and maybe having it at a little bit of an angle, or maybe one little drop is not quite as big as the other ones.
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So it does have some advantage.
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Now, the disadvantage of the tablets is that it takes time to crush them, and the photometer compared to the Taylor test kit is gonna be a lot slower.
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I would say that to do the full readings, let's just say you're using the Lamont 2086 Color Q2X Pro 7, that the Pro 7 2X, whatever, the it's just indicating that it's the latest model of this particular rendition of the photometer, and it's really fast.
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It's it's much faster than the old version for sure.
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When you once you do the reading and start to test, it's it's a quicker readout.
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Now, the advantage of the photometer is that you get a digital readout, so it's a little more expensive test kit, it's like around 200 200 250 bucks for this particular test kit versus the tailor test kit, which is like$70 retail.
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So it's like twice or three times the cost of it.
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However, you do get a dual optic photometer, which means that it actually reads the reads the test tube, the color in the test tube for you, and gives you a digital readout.
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So the advantage is of course it's more accurate than a region test kit where you're kind of just looking at the color and you have to kind of decide what reading that is.
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Basically, the photometer is a much more accurate way to test, and it's something that tests I think about the same amount of test factors as the K2005.
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And it's one of those things where if you want accuracy and you're not too worried about time, then the photometer is something you should consider getting.
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Now, I would say the photometer test would be great to use once a month out on your pool route to get a really good reading of all the pools.
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And I prefer the Color Q2X Pro 9 myself.
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The Pro 9 is a little more expensive, but it does come with copper and iron tablets, so it can test for metals while you're out in the field, which is important out there, especially if your area is prone to have metal in the water.
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So the Color Q2X Pro 9 does two extra tests over the 2x7, which is copper and iron.
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And if you are looking for a photometer, I would recommend going with the 2x Pro 9 instead of the 2X Pro 7 for field use.
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There are other photometer brands out there.
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You have the Poolab 2.0, which I think is a really good photometer that you could get a lot of test factors with it, and it does three test factors at once.
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Now it does use those tablets, so it can be a pain point for a lot of people.
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A lot of the negative reviews for it are the tablets, and it's one of those things that does take more time.
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And the interface is a little bit more complicated than the Lamotte testers.
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There's a little bit more brain power needed using the Pool Lab 2.0, in my opinion, versus the uh color, the uh Lamotte color cue testers are a lot easier to use.
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You also have the ITS digital the digital photometers as well.
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They use test strips that are pre-measured.
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So instead of using the tablets, if you're kind of opposed to the tablets and you're looking for a fast photometer, these are also great because they have little test strips that are industry specific to their photometer.
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The region is has been measured onto each of these test strips, and each container contains just pH or chlorine test strips or alkalinity test strips.
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You dip it in there, move it back and forth a few times, and you're gonna be able to get the reading.
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So that's a little easier photometer because you're not using the tablets, you're actually using kind of test strips, but they're not test strips in the traditional sense of test strips if that makes sense.
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Now there's other digital meters also that you can get.
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If you look on Amazon, there's several off-brand ones as well, and on Walmart.com, there's some other ones too that read test strips and read tablets as well.
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So you have some choices there, but I always like to stick with the brand, brand name photometers, like Lamotte would be one, of course, where you know they have a long history in the industry of making reliable testers.
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You also have the Lamont Spin Touch, which is the Ferrari of test kits.
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I call it that because that's really what it is.
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It does 10 test factors in one minute, and it's a very accurate way to test.
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They use these discs that are very similar to what they use in hospitals to do blood testing.
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That's where they kind of got the idea to make the spin touch.
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And it's been around long enough now that it's been vented, and you know, it's I think it's well over 10 years now that it's been on the market or close to that amount of time.
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So it's been tested by a lot of pool pros.
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It's accurate, they have done a lot of firm wire updates and to make and make it better.
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And I would say that if you're looking for the best photometer and you have the money to spend, which is about a thousand dollars for this thing, and the discs are not cheap by the way, either.
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You have to buy these 50-50 packs of discs, and they cost quite a bit of money per disc.
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But in the long run, it is the best photometer out there on the market.
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So if you're looking for the best of the best, then the spin touch by Lamotte is definitely that.
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And since I'm talking about a thousand dollar tester, let me just reset everything here and talk about just a$15 pack of test strips.
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Now, can you get away with testing your pool and spa with test strips?
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Yes, you can.
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It's it's something that you could definitely use out there, and these are really great for testing the water to get kind of a ballpark of what the reading is.
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For instance, the Aqua Check yellow four-way pool and spa test strips, you get 50 of them, and you can test for pH, free chlorine, tallacy, cyaneric acid.
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This one here is$1180 on Amazon.
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So that gives you about 50 weeks of testing if you're a homeowner, or if you do if you're a pool pro.
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This may last, of course, you're gonna need more test strips than this.
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If you test all your pools on your route, you probably need to get some at your supplier to get the ones that have 200 or you know 100 per pack.
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But you would use one of these up per week.
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So basically, if you're just getting if you just buy two of these and the retail price is$11, it's gonna cost you$20 a week to test 100 pools on your pool route.
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Fairly good price point per pool for test, and it's probably a little bit less expensive or right in range with the Taylor K2005 reagents that you're gonna use at each pool.
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However, the Aqua Check test strips are really fast, you know.
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In 10 seconds, you're gonna have the reading, and you're going to be able to just match it to the back of the container.
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And it again is very similar to the reagent test kit where you're looking at the color and you're making the judgment of is the pH 7.6 or 7.4, is the alkalinity 100 or 120?
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You're using kind of the color to eyeball it, and so it's not nearly as accurate as the$1,000 spin touch or the color Q2X Pro 7, but it's$11 for 50 of them, so you really can't argue with that.
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Lamotte also makes test strips, by the way, and a lot of other companies make test strips.
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Taylor makes them as well, and it's something that as a pool owner, you know, you can get away with using these pretty much.
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It's not something that you you won't have the most accurate test, but do you really need to know if the pH is 7.5 or 7.4 or 7.6?
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I technically, yes, technically no, in some regards.
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If you're doing commercial pools, these won't work, of course.
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And you know, is the chlorine 3.0 or is it 2.5 or 2.8?
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It really doesn't make a huge difference if it's 2.5 or 3.0 or 3.5.
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And the range kind of is the same with the Taylor region.
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You're looking at the color and you're kind of guesstimating it is it 3.0, is it 3.5, is it 4.0?
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So, again, the only real test kit that is accurate and it's going to give you that spot on the pH is 7.82 or 7.83 is a photometer.
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Otherwise, you're kind of just looking at it and making an educated guess on the color.
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And the nice thing about test strips, lastly, here is that it can there's a wide range of different test strips you can get.
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You can get test strips for iron, copper, you can get test strips for borate, you can get test strips for salinity, which I don't really like that much, but they're out there.
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You get test strips for phosphate, so there's a lot more you can test for.
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You can test for nitrates with test strips.
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So test strips have a much better range than the reagent test kits, and in some respects, a better range than a lot of the photometers out there, except maybe the Lamont Spin Touch, where you can also do phosphates and boreys with a certain disc as well.
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Thanks for listening to this podcast.
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Have the rest of your week.
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God bless.