FC Testing: Taylor k2006 vs DPD 1 Photometer and Rapid tests

[SteveSwims]

Ok, another spanner in the works.

I actually had some refills of Taylor R-0870 and R-0871 delivered today (from Amazon US) and have just used them to test.

With the reagents from my original Taylor kit I got 3.4FC and 0 CC.

With the refills I got 0.8 FC and 2.6CC!

The originals have an expiry date of Jan/Mar 2025 and the refills are Aug 2025.

Have I been using bad Taylor Reagents up to now??

 

[PoolStored]

That is a clear potential. Higher results typically means they have degraded.

When you buy on amazon, that stuff sits in warehouses...you have no idea the condition they are stored. That is why I would not buy from amazon, got burnt too many times. We do what we can...

 

[SteveSwims]

Great, so I’ve been swimming in bad pool water the last couple of weeks

As mentioned very limited options to get Taylor gear in the U.K.

The refill results seem more in line with my DPD tablet results anyway.

 

[SteveSwims]

Just an update, I used my latest Taylor refills reading (0.6ppm FC) as my starting point to add my chlorine last night, to get back upto 4ppm (pool math = 1100ml). This morning I tested again and got readings of 4.2ppm FC using the Taylor refills and 3.1ppm with the Pool Lab 2.0 (not quite the same as the Taylor results but much closer than the 0.5 that I had been getting in every Pool Lab 2.0 test up to now).

Will keep comparing for the next few days but I guess my original Taylor chemicals went bad at some point after my first tests and were giving me false high FC readings (meaning I wasn’t adding enough chlorine each day) whilst the DPD tablet tests (Pool Lab 2.0 & colour comparison) were actually giving the more accurate results after all.

Might just be useful for anyone else who is seeing a similar discrepancy between different test types in the future.

Fingers crossed it all balances out now, thanks all!