Total Water Hardness Test for Pool, Aquarium, and Drinking Water, and Improving Water Softener Efficiency, Hard Water Test Kit

Our county water is incredibly hard. I installed a water softener so I could stop replacing fixtures. To set it up properly, I had to know exactly how hard the water was, but the county doesn't publish that number, and won't give a straight answer when asked. I tried the strip test kits, but they are unreliable; no two strips give the same answer. The pro test kits are way more expensive than I could justify. Found this and decided to give it a try. Really glad I did. This turned out to be a great test kit at a very reasonable pride The repeatability is great, every time I do a test, the result is the same. 18 grains untreated, 0 after the softener. I can't really comment on the absolute accuracy without paying for a commercial test to compare it with, but I used the results to set up the regen cycle on my softener, and it's working exactly as it should, so it must be close. Results were very easy to read, no ambiguity. There's enough testing solution for many tests, even at the high usage my water required. The only weird thing about it is it gives results in some German units called DH. Not an issue because DH is only 4% different than GPG, the standard US units. That's well within the accuracy of a dropper and vial test like this. Convert it (x 1.04), or pretend it's in GPG and call it good.

works good

Bought this kit to test the performance of our water softener and to determine if our outdoor spigots provided soft or hard water. Obvious color change to signify hard/vs soft. I had previously tried test strips and they were useless.

Easy to use. Package arrived with measuring cup broken due to poor shipping packaging. Not a product problem.

Tried the dip tabs, they didn’t work. This did a little better. Finally got my water softener guy to check the softness with his kit & the results were comparable.

Testing water hardness for RO processing

I purchased this to keep track of the total hardness of the water in my hot tub as the test strips were always telling me that the water was very hard and I wanted a second way of ensuring what I had. I tested 3 different times using this test kit and one each test the water turned blue after 4 drops or regent - Soft Water. Too soft for my hot tub. I had a friend test it without my coaching to see if he got a different result, he got 3 drops - soft water. So I used it to test my tap water. In Tucson we have VERY hard water due to all of the copper and hard minerals in the ground water. It turned blue with 8 drops - not as soft, but still soft water. So I decided to try testing the water coming out of my RO system. Can you believe 5 drops of regent. The system is completely unreliable and inaccurate.

I don't think it's accurate at high levels of hardness--possibly because the sample volume is too small. Our hardness came to about 170 ppm, but we know it's much higher (>600, TDS >900). It was more useful testing the post-softener water than to determine the hardness we're trying to reduce. It will help me monitor softener function and adjust regeneration frequency, but I don't think it's reading all the hardness in the untreated water. Of note, there are 2 volumes for samples. One is for the German units (5mL) which most people seem to be using. The multiplier for ppm is 17.848 x drops in dGH = ppm (mg/L). For the 9mL test line in French units, it's a multiplier of 10. I find that much easier. So, it took 17 drops to change color in a 9mL sample and our hardness was "170ppm" (I don't think so) which is about 10 grains per gallon. There are online calculators to help you convert between the various units. Most importantly, a US softener capacity is measured in grains. To determine gallons per regeneration cycle, divide your grain capacity by the grains per gallon hardness of your water.

Easy to use and accurate as far as I can tell. I am quite satisfied with the chemical test.

I bought this kit to test my hot tub and my water softener. It works perfectly. As you can see on my photos, the color changed dramatically when you reach the turning point. In my case it was 7 drops. I tested water after the water softener and got 0 ppm hardness. So my well water is not that hard. Don't know why the former owner bought it?

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Works great and more accurate than test strips. As others have stated the instructions refer to German or French measures of hardness (5 or 9 ml water sample). German hardness values are very close to grains of hardness as measured in North America. If you want you could put 4.8 ml of water in the vial and each drop of reagent added would correspond to 1 grain of hardness. Probably a good idea to use a syringe to measure 4.8 ml accurately. Not sure why one reviewer sent back their water softener when their measurement came out to 12 or 13 grains, that is considered hard water and there would be definite benefits to having a softener !

It was a little difficult to understand the results. I wear glasses, and the instructions were so small I had to use a magnifying glass!