Hi. A few comments:

The kit MAY be good still. CarlD came up with this way to test the strength of his bleach. If you know your bleach is fresh (check the code on the bottle. Code will read something like 15173. That would be the 173rd day of 2015), You could try a sort of reverse of his test. I quote, "So, if you pour 1.88ml of bleach/liquid shock/liquid chlorine into 5 gallons of fresh water, you should get the same FC reading as if you dump 1 gallon into 10,000 gallons of water." You could give that a try. Hope that makes sense.

Secondly, your FC/CC test is very different than a FAS-DPD. The FAS-DPD can test up to 50ppm FC. Yours only goes to 5ppm.

A CYA test is critical to pool management. You must know the CYA level of your water in order to determine the amount of FC necessary to keep your pool sanitary and algae-free. See: http://poolsolutions.com/gd/best-gue...ine-chart.html

Another option is to go get a cheap OTO kit (not refills, you need the kit with the comparator tube). Then you will be able to test FC/CC with fresh reagents although still only to 5ppm. You can use this to at least help go a bit higher: https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-t...rev%252001.jpg

Finally, I would strongly encourage you to save up for the K-2006C.

Good luck.