Salt Reading Too High

[AUSpool]

Hi Mgxzen, when did you buy your kit? Mines about two months old max, I tested my very new 20,000 litre pool which as far as I know had three 20kg bags of salt at new fill in September last year( i remember them), I added another 20kg bag based on shop test two months ago, just before I knew about TFP, after that my CCL test was off the charts at 8000ppm. It didn't add up. I then tested the 4000ppm sample supplied by CCL and it was 5300ppm using a smart stir so I pretty confident in that test, my salt reagents are now exhausted BTW after testing and draining pool water. Two things I learnt I think, my salt was high but not that high and the test is faulty by about a third too high. I've email CCL with no reply which is disappointing.

Did either yourself or @mgxzen notice a difference in drop sizes between the two reagents? I believe there may be an issue with the tips making the drops too small on the reagent 3 bottle. Carefully swapping the tips may solve the issue but you need to be very careful. The reagents are very low volume and you don’t want to contaminate either with the other. Rinse in clear ammonia (if you have it), then distilled water and air dry in the sun. Be careful of the reagent 3, silver nitrate stain anything it comes in contact with. Use gloves and eye protection. And be very careful to remember which tip is which, rinse them separately, one at a time.

After swapping the yellowish detection indicator reagent 2, potassium chromate, will dispense a lower volume but it’s not that critical. An extra drop will help.

 

[Damon912]

Did either yourself or @mgxzen notice a difference in drop sizes between the two reagents?

Thinking back, maybe? I do know the red PH small tip which does like to bubble seems to have a nice large round drop. Maybe thats normal size and the silver nitrate salt tip drop is smaller. My silver nitrate is now exhausted by continuous testing knowing something was off. Interestingly though, if i divided my test by 80 instead of 200 for the normal insensitive test it seemed spot on for what gut feel the level should have been with 80kg of salt over the short life of the pool.

 

[mgxzen]

I'm not sure if there was a difference in drop sizes. Possibly?

We had a lot of rain the last few days so I've drained a few cm (not very scientific) from the pool and have since topped up with tap water.

I haven't tested using CCL since the rain but this morning I brought my water to the local pool shop which measured salt at 5240 ppm.
I understand pool store testers can be innaccurate but for something like salt which has a wide range of being ok can I use their numbers as a rough estimate?

EDIT: @Damon912 - I bought the test kit exactly 1 month ago