This past Saturday, I had an opportunity to compare my friend's pool which is maintained using pool store testing and recommendations vs testing with my TF100 test kit. Our pools are almost identical in shape and size. I suspect ours has a little more volume because our shallow end drops off much quicker than theirs. The test results were surprisingly similar with very little variance in any of the values. My friend mentioned that they only put in the pool that which the store tells them they need and they believe the pool store doesn't sell them anything more then they need. Apparently last week they put "Lo and Slow" in the water at the recommendation of the pool store and earlier in the week they put some "shock" because they had kids over the weekend playing in the pool. They were surprised to learn that we haven't added anything to our pool since the beginning of the season. Based on the results that I got using my kit, I believe their water is as safe as ours (with the exception of pH which was off the chart), but what was interesting is that ours is so much clearer than theirs. Both my husband and I agreed that we prefer our TFP method of sparkly pool to their pool store, slightly cloudy pool.
