Testing Tutorial

[car8857123]

How about a "how to" video showing exactly how to do the tests and how the results should look? Some people are intimidated by the thought of chemistry even though in reality it's so easy. Others like myself might be confused by color changes. For example, I kept adding baking soda to my pool trying to get the alkalinity up enough to get the test sample to turn red, not knowing until I posted here that just turning pink is all I needed to get an accurate reading.

 

[Guest]

I believe that what you are calling pink is what most of us call red. The color change for a chlorine pool NOT at shock level is from green to red. The CH test is a pink to light blue

 

[car8857123]

Exactly, Waterbear. And it was you who cleared that up for me. But if I didn't know that, I would have kept going trying to get that darn pink sample to turn red.

 

[Guest]

Exactly, Waterbear. And it was you who cleared that up for me. But if I didn't know that, I would have kept going trying to get that darn pink sample to turn red.

But the color change for that test is green to red.
No specific shade of red is specified. however the intructions for the test do say to add the drops until the color changes from green to red. I would think that when the color is no longer green one would assume that any shade in the red family is the endpoint, particularly when no further color change is occuring. I don't understand why you thought you needed to add baking soda to make the color become redder. the color change occurred and gave you a ppm number for your TA.

 

[car8857123]

Well call me bright, ha ha. Seriously I honestly didn't realize that I was getting a proper ppm reading, because when the test said red I really thought red as in Christmas red and didn't realize that the pink was my endpoint. So I kept adding more baking soda. Now, I needed to replace my liner so this was a new fill I was adjusting and a new test kit. So, no harm done because when I finally got nervous and posted, my alkalinity was about 110. So, good thing I asked about the color when I did.

 

[Guest]

The color should be a definite red unless your FC is high. Then the test will bleach out somewhat. If the chlorine is very high the color will be from blue to yellow because one of the indicator dyes does bleach out at high chlorine levels. The endpoint of the test is when adding one more drop produces no more color change. When that happens don't count that last drop. I suspect that your initial color was not green but more of a blue green because of partial bleach out.