This whole process is becoming a fascinating exercise in interpretation. My pool man was here this afternoon and I caught him in time to discuss water chemistry. He said, "let's have a look" and used his kit and reagents. He said my pH was 7.6 according to his kit. I performed the same test with my Taylor Pro kit and read 8 or over. He looked at the taylor tubes which have a color guide next to them and said he thought the color gradations were all too close. He uses something called GuardX? It was a lot easier to read. Then I took a sample into my dealer along with my strips and Taylor kit. My strips and kit both read 8 or over again, but his computer analysis machine said 7.6. He looked at the strips that came with my startup kit and noticed they had expired over a year ago! He gave me a new tube of strips and used one to check pH. I looked at it and it looked close to the 8.0. He said the way he does the strips is anything that doesn't look like the most extreme (RED) is probably OK. Anyhow, I'm going to move cautiously when adding chems.
