Quote Originally Posted by PoolDoc View Post
You, and a million other people. Unfortunately, the 'wet-end' technology for turning chemical conditions into PRECISE electrical signals is 50+ years old, and has not improved. The anitique IT acronym "GIGO" (Garbage in; garbage out!) applies directly here: no amount of digital technology on the 'dry end' can make up for randomly bad data originating on the 'wet end'!

But, where there's a desire to buy, there will be a willingness to sell 'snake oil'. And, until the 'wet end' tech advances, that's about all that digital pool sensing and control will be.

Meanwhile, lots of companies are separating lots of pool owners, from lots of money, by selling them lots of 'snake oil' tech.



That is precisely what they don't do: they don't make up for it at all. "GIGO" applies here, too. Bad data from 'guess-strips' ==> bad treatment decisions ==> bad pool conditions ==> unhappiness with how nasty the pool is, and how hard pool care is.

With experience, testing frequency will be very low. I'd be embarrassed to tell you the testing frequency I follow on very large commercial pools, once I've serviced them for years. (Chlorine levels ARE tested 4x or more per day, though!) Once you've learned how to care for your pool, you probably won't need to test CH or CYA more than 3x per year. If you have a vinyl pool and no heater . . . you probably won't test TA at all, unless you have some indication of an issue. You'll ALWAYS need to test chlorine 3x per week, and pH at least 1x per week, but 2 of those events can usually be done with an OTO/phenol red kit (2 minutes!)

BUT . . . if you want to have an enjoyable, relatively inexpensive and trouble free pool THIS summer, you're going to need to test more than that, and to test accurately.
Yes I've seen a few "electronic testers" for certain pool chemical metrics. Good to know good they are not. So all this discussion about testing and kits and how best to do it forced me to pull out the regent based kit again and go through all the tests. Alarmingly I found that according to the alkalinity titration test (which I performed twice) my alkalinity is at 150 (took 15 drops to make the pale blue go clear). It is supposed to be 80 to 120. So I went to Taylor's site and looked for relationship between alkalinity and Cyanuric acid and found this link https://www.taylortechnologies.com/C...SP?ContentID=5.

I don't have a CYA test kit yet but if I'm reading the Taylor page correctly a big part of that 150 could be attributable to Cyanuric acid levels in my pool. Sort of a shadow effect. So then the question becomes is my alkalinty really that high because the strips don't say that (both versions). Seems the straight forward TA test does not account for a Cyanuric byproduct titrating out cumulatively with the alkaline.

Still at 150 that's high so will probably need to get that down just a little until the CYA kit gets here. Yet the pool looks and acts fine. Even the floaters are gone.