Taylor Test Kit and Kool Aid

[Micah]

I brought in the taylor line to our stores to offer to customers.  The more I work with it, the more I dis-trust a couple of the readings.  
1. P.H.    In most quality test kits a CL. neutralizer is included so as not to give a false P.H reading.  Taylor kits do not come with this.  We have found on several occations we were getting a P.H reading of 8.2 when in fact the P.H. is 6.8  In these cases the clorine or bromine reading was on the high side.  Why dosent Taylor offer a CL. neutralizer in what they call a high end test kit.

2. Total Alkalinity.   As you add drops of bottle 9 the water should go from green to red.  Instead it goes from green  to pink to dark purple.  It can be up to 4-5 drops different from where it starts to go pinkish to really a red.  That can be the differance of 50ppm TA or 100ppm TA.  It dosent seem as accurate as some other test kits I have used.

Can someone explain why taylor is considered the ultimate test kit. If not should we start to use the "KOOL AID" referance to taylor users as well as HS sales people.

[Cyn]

The TA test has always been questionable for me...I have written twice asking if users stop counting at pink or red??  Most say they stop at the first turn from green to what I call pale pinkish, gray, although a few say they go the next step of hot pink which is usually another drop.  But I still wondered since the directions don't say green to pink, they say red.  And the pink does get redder with each drop.  

[Richs100]

I agree.  

Sometimes I have a lot of difficulty with the colors grids.  The reading that really drives me crazy is Chlorine.  I cannot for the life of me, tell the the difference between the colors sometimes.  (Even using 1/2 test water and 1/2 bottle water to dilute).  But generally, I think I get a better idea of where my tub is, then when I use strips.

I had no heard about the pH reading problems, either.  Makes me wonder about some of the intial readings I have gotten on a refill that I have a lot of difficulty adjusting.

[Vinny]

OK, here it is from a koolaid drinker for Taylor ... not HS though.

Taylor kits are DPD and they differenciate between FC and TC which gives you CC (TC-FC=CC). It only really works when the FC is close to 0 as it can be hard to tell between 3 and 5 PPM chlorine.

OTO kits (I have had these as well) only measure TC. They claim that it measures the difference but anyone who uses chlorine test kits knows the longer the reagent is in contact with the water the darker the color gets. Taylor test kits seem to be accurate for about a minute.

The difference is a pink color (DPD) or yellow color (OTO) but if the OTO is inaccurate it doesn't matter.

Anytime the chlorine is high, you should not test the water. This is the second type of test kit I have had and they both stated this. I never heard of a test kit with a chlorine neutralizer ... everything has a PH and I would assume adding anything to 40 ml of water may change the PH. High chlorine will skew all the tests except chlorine but I have even read that if chlorine is too high it will bleach out the DPD tests as well.

LaMotte may offer a similar kit but these are not available around me. DPD kits tend to be more accurate for chlorine than OTO and I guess strips ... I never used strips. Honestly, like Hot Springs it may well be that there are better kits out there but the marketing is so good that we believe in what we heard!