Yes, I have the AquaChem kit. My chlorine has been high lately(Saturday I had it up to 12ppm, and it's been drifting down since), but when I did the test yesterday, TC was definetly between 1.5 and 3ppm. The OTO colors are tough to read for me above 3...but this was definetly below 3. Unless something is really wrong with my test kit.

The pool store's test goes from green to red. At what ppm Chlorine is the TA test useless? I'm trying to keep my Chlorine at 5-6ppm...can I ever expect to get an accurate reading for TA if you say Ben's kit has the same bleaching out problems? Any way to get around the bleaching out problems? I know high TA is not good, especially for a concrete surface. If I need to start decreasing it, I need an accurate test to tell me so. I've been adding acid almost every day just to keep the pH at 7.6. It's been drifting up to 7.8 all the time.

Also, I noticed the book with the kit says "Water Hardness test" for the hardness. Like you said, it could be testing for total hardness, not Calcium Hardness.