I was lucky

We had a pool from the early 80s till the mid 90s. I was able to keep the water very nice for the most part, despite being clueless. My success was obviously due to me keeping the PH, chlorine and alkalinity between the ditches. I have volunteered to maintain the pools of 3 of my sons. I will have to learn quickly, actually for the first time.

Being on a small fixed income, I'd still like to have a test kit that will enable me to ACCURATELY monitor the essentials on these three pools. My youngest son gave me a Blue Devil 5 OTO kit. It has no test for cyanuric acid. Should I scrap the kit and go with another, more expensive one or, can I buy the reagent and stuff for the stabilizer test? What is the difference in the OTO kits and the other D...something kits?

The BEST kit for the money would be a Taylor K-2006. OTO only tests total chlorine. You need to test FC and CC. Of the two test methods that do this the FAS-DPD method (in the K-2oo6) is far superior to any kit that uses DPD testing. It allows testing chlorine levels as high as about 50 ppm with a precision of .2 ppm (or .5 ppm), depending on the size of the water sample. I would save the OTO test for quick daily chlorine checks. It is also a useful test to determine if there is chlorine present or not but it only will tell you total chlorine so it is more of yes/no test to the question "Is there chlorine in the water?" and not whether the chlorine is FC (available to sanitize) or CC (that has combined with organics and is a problem).
The essentials you need to monitor are:
FC
CC
pH
TA
CH (even with a vinyl pool you need to know the calcium level of the water, you just don't need to add additional calcium if it is low.)
CYA

Thie K-2006 will test for all of these and also includes acid and base demand tests which are useful from time to time. There really isn't another kit for less money that will do this but there are a few more expensive ones that will!

The Taylor K-2006 is the test kit we recommend for everyone here. It has a FAS-DPD test for Free Chlorine and Combined Chlorine. FAS-DPD is far eaisier to read than any color match and can measure much higher chlorine levels. As you'll be taking care of three pools, I recommend you get the K-2006C kit, It has 2oz reagent bottles as opposed to the 3/4oz on the K-2006. This test kit is generally unavailable locally, you'll have to order it online. The moderators on this site have links in thier signatures for buying these kits.

Don't scrap the other kit, OTO can be very usefull for every day testing and for special circumstnces.

membership upgraded. -ben

Blue Devil also makes a CYA test and sells it separately. It's not very expensive and good for about four tests. The Leslie's in my area sells them as does Amazon.