Water Hardness Testing Kit

I've used testing strips before and found them pretty vague as there isn't much difference in colour between hard and soft. This kit has a strong change of colour from pink to blue, and is very sudden. For instance there was only 1 drop added after 20 to make the colour change, so I could tell the hardness was 400 to 420 ppm and the water softener wasn't working. After doing a resin clean the colour changed after just 1 drop so water fully softened.The older strip test however went from muddy brown (couldn't really match colour so didn't know hardness) to green so did confirm that water was now soft. The strip test wouldn't have been useful for setting the salt level on a dishwasher or coffee machine accurately, while this testing kit would give a much more accurate idea of water hardness.

Works well to test water hardness

Use this for hot tub in a hard water area. Very accurate and easy to use. A bottle lasts for years. This is my second bottle in seven years.

Brilliant. Easy to use. Put 10ml in test tube, then add liquid slowly, drop by drop. Shake after every drop. Goes pink until the hardness measure is reached then suddenly turns blue. Each drop is equivalent to 20ppm. If the water is soft you will get blue almost immediately in 1-2 drops. Helped me discover that my water softener was not working at all - and vice versa confirm that is is working now after I called a service engineer out to repair it.

I cannot get any useful results from this product. Adding a few drops of the reagent to a 10ml sample of water as per instructions does not give any noticeable colour, certainly not a distinct red or blue as described. Shouldn't there be an additional chemical (indicator?) to be mixed with the sample before the reagent is added one drop at a time? I cannot recommend this product as it stands because it simply doesn't work for me.

I assume this is accurate. It gives very different results between our softened and unsoftened water, so at least it seems to work well. The best bit is that it is easy to understand what your actual hardness is and there is plenty to re-test as needed. Recommended over strips.

Mine arrived with the label covering the test bottle calibrations - a dumb thing for the maker to do. However, it could be peeled and repositioned easily, as the label lifts off without leaving adhesive behind. That said, it is easy to use, the colour change being obvious when it happens. The test fluid has a shelf life of 19-20 months, so will be useable for several repeat tests.

Easy to use and accurate. I used it to test the performance of my water softener and the result was as expected. The test took less than a minute to complete.