Testing for chlorine Cl2 or tri-chlor

I am brand new (obviously) to this site. It looks great by the way!

My "pool guy" had installed an automatic chlorine-maker that goes directly into my pool. It's called AquaClear or Aquaclear Technologies. I cannot seem to find any chlorine using test strips or the pool testing kit that my pool builder/installer had given me. The "pool guy" says the test-strips test for a 'different kind of chlorine' a.ka. tri-chlor or tablet chlorine. He also said the pool store's tests look for the same 'kind' of chlorine. This pool guy had given me a little bottle of Oto-something, and said that I need to take 2 ounces of my pool water in a clear glass, and add 5 drops of the yellow-capped Oto reagent. This should make my sample turn slightly yellow, indicating that there is chlorine being made/dumped into the pool by the AquaClear equipment.

Question: Is he correct to say that any testing done by the most reputable pool store in the Phoenix area won't 'find' or be able to test and show that chlorine exists in my pool?
Have any of you used equipment like this? This equipment is making pure liquid chorine, and makes it so I don't have to add chlorine tabs and not have to 'mess with the chemistry of my pool'. I run my pump around 12 hours per day (10 hours at night, 2 in the daytime).


Recently, I've had some green algae starting to grow on some spots on the walls of my pool. It's a pebble-tec pool, and I'm located in Gilbert, Arizona. Right now, my pool's water temperature is 88 degrees. Our monsoon season is beginning also. I just want to avoid getting into green water, frogs and fish.

Thanks in advance for replies and advice,

PurpleTurkey

He's either lying or an ignoramous who doesn't have a clue. In either case, he's full of it.

Chlorine in your water is chlorine. Period. It's the fundamental chlorine ion and chlorine is an element, like iron, gold, oxygen, carbon and plutonium.

If your tests reveal 0 chlorine than either you have no chlorine or your test kit is corrupted. If it's the first, then your SWG may not be working--or is adjusted incorrectly. If it's the latter, you need what we think EVERYBODY needs--a proper test kit.

Carl, some pool store's are so fixated on the "DPD standard" that they don't test for combined chlorine: if there's no free chlorine present, they will report no chlorine at all. OTO will show yellow if EITHER free chlorine OR combined chlorine is present. Some (usually bogus) treatment systems deliberately produce combined chlorine. In such cases, it's possible that OTO will show chlorine, but that a DPD-fixated pool store will not. Of course, if the store goes ahead and adds potassium iodide to the sample, and retests for TOTAL chlorine, then they will see approximately the same value that would be seen with OTO.

Still, if a pool's turning green, and the pH is in range, MORE chlorine is called for, till the algae stops.

Ben
PoolDoc

Sorry to resurrect and old thread, but I'm hoping to find some help with the AquaClear comany. I have the AquaClear system too and I am in Gilbert. Our pool was finished the end of May. Everything was going great until our infloor cleaning system quit about 6 wks. later. When they came out to fix it, they showed me that the metal parts were either gone or disintigrating. They replaced everything and 2 wks. later it happened again. Around that same time, we noticed algae growing. I did the testing with the oto drops and it looked fine, but when I did the traditional test kit the chlorine looked low. Since we had algae we put a couple of chlorine tabs in the floater. We now just keep one or two in it all the time and we don't have alage. But now our infloor system won't work and they won't fix it until we do something about the AquaClear. Do you remember the BAD monsoon we had last week? Well, we still have dirt in our pool. The water is beautiful if you can get past the brown at the bottom. We sweep it alot and most of it is gone now, but it is still there.

But have you seen what is going on with AquaClear? They have a cease and desist order against them. Channel 3 did a couple of stories on them. You can go to their website and see them if you haven't heard about it. And now I can't get ahold of anyone to get any help. A company called on Aug. 10th and left a message saying that they are the new maintnance company for AquaClear and said that they would be sending us something in the mail with info on what to do for maintnanace. So far we haven't gotten it and I found their # through 411 and they haven't returned any calls. We don't want to quit using it without someone coming out first because we want them to see it working. But we can't go on much longer without our cleaning system working. Let me know how things have been going with your system lately. I'm very curious to hear.

ttfn,
Generally it's better to start a new thread but since you're problem seems similar to the original posters problem, fine. We really need some info to be able to help.
Specifically: Free & combined chlorine, pH, TA--Total Alkalinity, CH--Calcium Hardness, and CYA--Cyanuric acid. Also some info on your pool like the type... liner, gunite, etc, pump and filter type and sizes or model numbers. Anything else that may help, even if you don't think it significant. On the chemistry you can take a sample to a reputible pool store for testing, just don't tell them anything and don't buy anything.
Chlorine is chlorine no matter what the source. Metal parts disintegrating after 6 weeks??? No way. Something is drastically wrong. Can't comment on Aquaclear as I know nothing...seriously.
Al