digital water testing equipment

[squeekee35]

well i was looking on line for some digital water testing stuff and found some by a company called hanna instruments. the US branch and the UK branch. man this stuff is spendy. i would like to have it but i am not spending hundreds of dollars on it anyway. but it sure would be handy to have around. i hate trying to compare the color of my vial of water to the color chart. it's just not very accurate. and is hard to compair especially if it falls between colors which most of the time it does.

--Angel

[lohachata]

there are a number of very reasonably priced water testing pens and meters...you just have to hun them down...try ebay..or just google it.

[emc7]

I have one Hanna meter and I love it. It went over 2 years on one $45 electrode in a $80 meter. I bought a cheap e-bay one for around $25 but in is manual calibration, so you have to adjust with a tiny screw to get accuracy when the temp. changes. The Hanna one auto calibrates and tells you the temp in F or C. If you use it everyday, you save enough time to be worth the money.

On the other hand, I have a $20 TDS meter that is sold for checking on your drinking water and it is good enough for what I need to do.

I have read of people buying the cheaper non-submersible meters and duct-taping plastic around them.

[squeekee35]

well i bit the bullet and bought a hanna nitrate reader. i used it tonite and it is so worth it. the color chart on my old kit was hard to tell between the oranges and the reds and i just wasn't happy about that. i am luving this thing already. my nitrates are 24.3 not some shade of orange that i can't tell apart. with all the stuff i had to buy with it it was pretty expensive but i got it all off of amazon and it came tonite. i bought the meter that goes from 0 to 100 ppm or rather mg/l i guess it is but they are the same anyway.

happy camper
--Angel

[emc7]

send us the link. Nitrate is one I don't have and I hate my liquid & powder tests. The tetra liquid test is, IMO, the best of the bunch. But nitrate is test I have the most kits that always read 0 or I otherwise know are dead.

On ppm vs. mg/L is IMO, "close enough". Ideally ppm would be vol in unit vol or g in Mg. and mg/L is always g (mass) per unit (volume), but given the mass of water is 1 g / cc @ STP, and it is pretty close. If you mesure the solid in milligrams and the water volume in L (1000g). You maybe should use a correction factor, but it will be a simple multiple related to molecule weight of the solute.

[squeekee35]

here is the meter it reads from 0 to 100 mg/L. part number HI96786 from amazon

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

here are the chemicals you need for it....part number HI93728-01 from amazon

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

the meter comes with two test bottles but you can buy extra. go to hanna instruments us to find the part numbers for those. there is also a cleaning solution you can get for the bottles and there is also some calibration chemiclas but i didn't know you didn't really need those and bought them anyway. to calibrate you just put your water sample with no chemicals in the meter and press the cal button. then you add the chemicals and press the read button and 4 and a half min later it gives you the value.

and amazon has everything there you just type in the part number and it will come up.

--Angel