- Oct 25, 2015
- 5,205
- Pool Size
- 25000
- Surface
- Plaster
- Chlorine
- Salt Water Generator
- SWG Type
- CircuPool RJ-60 Plus
Folks,
Last November I started using a Dr. Tester portable pH probe due to my problems reading the different shades of red and orange on the liquid test kit that's so popular. I promised I'd follow up so here's my assessment:
Pro's
Con's
Conclusions and recommendations:
I hope this helps.
Chris
Last November I started using a Dr. Tester portable pH probe due to my problems reading the different shades of red and orange on the liquid test kit that's so popular. I promised I'd follow up so here's my assessment:
Pro's
- It works great, is extremely reliable.
- My biggest concern was how well it would stay calibrated. It only required calibration a few times first few weeks and even then it was .1 ph unit. After 3 weeks it was never off again. Don't know how they do it in such a cheap device but sensor technology has improved dramatically in the last few years-maybe this helped.
- It's very quick but you do have to wait 20 seconds or so for the reading to stabilize.
- Reads full range. Phenol red's range is limited to about 7.0 to 8.0 so it is possible to accidentally get very high or very low pH and not realize it.
Con's
- The only problem I've had is the readings got very erratic - climbing and dropping the entire scale over and over... I thought it was fried. But I removed the batteries and found a little rusty corrosion on one of the 3 coin type cells. Cleaned it and works good as new. This happens every 3 months or so in the humid pool environment.
Conclusions and recommendations:
- This is a superb device for anybody that has color-blindness difficulties with the red-orange color ranges. It's actually also a good adjunct for the TF 100 test kit for anybody. I like to use the FAS-DPD for chlorine and not have to use the other drop test for pH. I find the oto chlorine test consistently runs lower than the FAS-DPD and I'm pretty sure the FAS-DPD is more accurate.
- Buy a small amount of pH 7 standard solution already made up. It's found on gardening sites very cheap. I got about a quart and that's probably a 10 year supply so get the smaller size.
- There are other brands that seem to have identical electronics. If anybody has experience with them please let us know in the replies. I'd avoid the ones that are around $10 as they are not temperature compensated. $7 more for temp compensation is worth it.
- I'll try some corrosion block on the batteries, that should help.
I hope this helps.
Chris
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