The Best Water Quality Test Kit for Your Home Reviews by Wirecutter

Table of Content

• Top 10 Home Water Test Kits Reviewed
• Detects Hard-to-Find Contaminants
• #3 Quality Water Treatment Well Water Test Kit (Best For Well Water)
• Water Source
• How Often Should You Test Your Water?
• SpringWell National Testing Laboratories Water Test

In addition to general home testing, our overall pick is also one of the best water test kits for drinking water. Identifying any potential contaminants that might be hazardous to your health is critical. This thorough test helps you identify what’s in the water you drink every day.

For example, the LCD screen lights up if the TDS reading falls below 40. The screen’s menu menu also features a large and easy to read display. A water test kit doesn’t have to be expensive to produce results. Test Assured makes a drinking water test kit that is not only affordable but also reliable. Another notable feature of JNW Direct Water Total Hardness Test Strips is that they’re easy to use.

Top 10 Home Water Test Kits Reviewed

Most tests are simple test strips that only require dipping them in your water to get the result immediately. The bacteria take 48 hours, like most brands, to allow the bacteria time to grow. You simply purchase, take a sample of your home water, and mail it in to the lab to get results within a few weeks. These tests feature designs for testing different things, including the water’s hardness, contaminants, and overall quality.

Use AquaChek Salt Water Swimming Pool Test Strips to ensure that your system is functioning properly and your pool has the proper salinity. Just be sure that you follow the directions and only immerse the strip in 1 inch of water. It should also be noted that a portion of the purchase price will be donated to global clean water initiatives. This is one of the most important factors to consider when buying a product. You need to be sure that they have been in business for some time, have a good reputation, and can provide you with customer support if necessary. Reputation– Many things must be considered when looking for a product, including brand reputation and customer feedback.

Detects Hard-to-Find Contaminants

Whether you’re concerned about what’s coming out of your tap or you want to check the efficiency of your current filtering system, we really think test kits are a good investment. Fill your water filter from the cold-water tap, hot water tends to dissolve contaminants. If you find that test results indicate the presence of certain contaminants, you will need to take a few actions to improve your water quality. To use a test strip, you just need to dip the strip in a sample of water and notice the color change.

Test strips are small and thin single-use strips that change color to indicate the presence of a contaminant. They can also provide a rough estimate of the concentration of a contaminant by the shade and brightness of the color. A single strip may only test for a single contaminant or may test for several contaminants. Test strips are one of the most common, affordable, and easiest water testing options. With the Simple Water’s Tap Score home water test kits, all you need to do is collect water samples from your well water as detailed in the package and send it to the Lab for water testing.

#3 Quality Water Treatment Well Water Test Kit (Best For Well Water)

The difference between two and three parts per million of iron, for example, can drastically affect a water softener’s efficiency. The EPA doesn’t set a limit on total dissolved solids, but they recommend further testing if levels are above 500 PPM. High TDS can indicate water quality issues that would benefit from filtration.

These strips are easy to use and come in a pack with two packs of 75 strips each, for a total of 150 strips. You can use these strips to monitor salt content in your tap water or drinking water or to test the effectiveness of the water softener you're using. The Health Metric Well Water Test Kit offers eight parameters to test your well water source.

Some of the pads also seemed slightly inaccurate, especially the one for nitrates. David is an expert in all things plumbing, heating, cooling, and water treatment. He got his start in the plumbing business working on fixing all types of home improvement issues including water leaks, broken toilets, appliance installation, and more.

If you’ve never done a water test before, the process is foolproof. Reports are comprehensive and include all the information you need to know about your water quality in a downloadable PDF file. The water tests are reliable and the results are dependable for both city and well water. Our rating takes into consideration factors such as ease of use, price, testing accuracy, lab certifications, speed of results, analytes tested, with personal testing or user feedback. Whether you’re drinking city or well water, what you can’t see can hurt you.

It’s also one of the single most important resources we can control that has a big impact on our health. Consumer Reports experts Perry Santanachote and James Dickerson explain how to find out about water testing and the best filtration systems. Flush your water line- routinely run cold water taps for about two minutes especially when no water has been used for several hours or days.

Hile using the Health Metric Drinking Water Test Kit we found some of the tests hard to read because the dyes on the test strip bleed together, resulting in colors that blur the result. When we compared tests like pH with ordinary pool test strips, the two numbers were slightly different, raising concerns about the accuracy of this test. The only downside to the Watersafe WS425B Drinking Water Test Kit is that the bacteria test takes 48 hours, and there is no way to tell if it’s working until it’s finished.

Best Home Water Test Kit 2022 Don't Be Fooled QWL

Table of Content

• All sharing options for:
• The Best Under-Sink Water Filter
• Accuracy
• Most Budget Friendly: JNW Testing Drinking Water 15-in-1 Water Test

If you buy something through our links, we may earn a commission. Erica Puisis writes about home products for The Spruce and specializes in interior design and plant care. She's contributed to Forbes and smart home blogs like Smart Home Solver and TechDigg. Good for a variety of water supplies like hydroponic gardens and aquariums.

These kits are more expensive and take longer to get results but if you want the best quality then opt for a lab test kit. You simply stick the TDS meter in your water and it will give you a measure of the quantity of total dissolved solids in your water. The main drawback is some of these tests are not as accurate as others and they don’t usually offer the amount of detail that a lab kit can offer. With a lab kit, you simply collect water from your home and send it in to the laboratory.

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A test strip is the least accurate, mostly because matching the colors on the strip to the contaminants indicated can be subjective and prone to user error. However, test strips that test for individual contaminants tend to be more accurate than strips that test for a wide range of volatile organic compounds. You will also be able to find other testing strips that can do more. They may even identify which contaminants are currently present in your home’s water supply. TDS meters are not useful for the purpose of finding contaminants, but they should be helpful when you are trying to figure out if it’s time to change your water filters.

✅ A SIMPLE, ACCURATE AND LOW-COST WAY to screen your water for the presence of potentially harmful contaminants. This appliance also has some handy features for your convenience. It includes a ‘Hold Function’ that allows you to record the test reading. It is also equipped with Auto-Off Technology that turns the system off automatically when not in use to preserve battery.

The Best Under-Sink Water Filter

This digital tool tests the water purity level with its Advanced Microprocessor Technology and delivers precise as well as instant results. The NovoBlue 14-in-1 Home Water Test Kit seemed to be more accurate than the test strip tests, but the entire kit is only good for one use. For example, this kit only detects iron up to a level of 1 ppm, but many people might have an actual level that reaches up to 5 ppm.

Color disc test kits are available for a broad range of substances. Water is combined with liquid or powdered reagents in a reusable plastic tube. The tube is placed in a viewing box with a color disk — hold it up to light and rotate it until the color matches the sample, and the contaminant value is displayed. Watercheck kits are an affordable way to test your water quality. Sampling instructions are clear — there’s a support video on the website if you’re a first-timer.

Accuracy

This water kit can be useful to test water from all sources, including filtered water and distilled water. It is challenging to dip the strips from the Crystal Water Filters 15 in 1 Drinking Water Test Kit without bleeding the colors together and ruining the results. Fifteen pads are a lot to put on a single strip, and they are very close together. It took us multiple tries to work out a system of dipping to get a good reading.

You can begin the process by dipping one of the JNW Direct Water Total Hardness Test Strips into the drinking water or well water sample. Then, compare the test strip with the color-coded chart on the outside of the bottle. Because JNW Direct Test Strips don’t test for bacteria, this isn’t a good option for those who receive their water from a well. These test strips are an excellent choice for those wondering if your water softener is working correctly or if they need to install one. The package contains 100 strips that produce fast and accurate results.

Designed with saltwater swimming pools in mind, this testing kit measures sodium chloride to ensure your pool has the proper salinity level. The instructions include useful tips, such as testing both ends of the pool twice a week. Another feature that set Tap Score apart from the competition was its customer support. When you get your report (it’s sent as a Web page, downloadable as a PDF), there’s a live chat function that you can use to ask questions about your report directly.

Maybe you’ve always been curious and want to finally confirm the quality of your water. All email addresses you provide will be used just for sending this story. For improving taste or odor, or dealing with less serious contamination, a carbon filter can help. Systems with 100,000 or more people must also post reports online.

Certified to remove contaminants, these water filters, pitchers, and dispensers can improve home drinking water. To minimize the cooler’s potential impact on the sample, I gave it a thorough wash with a simple industrial degreaser to remove any oily residues, followed by a rinse with pure white vinegar. That was followed by multiple rinses with plain tap water and 12 hours of drying in the airflow from our top-pick air purifier . However, as the Flint and Newark lead crises demonstrate, a CCR cannot account for problems that crop up downstream of testing stations. There are no hard and fast rules, some experts say once a month while others will say every six months is sufficient. If your tap water comes from the city then less frequent testing should be sufficient.

However, they only indicate a rough estimate on contamination levels of your water without detailed information. They are also not suitable if you are testing for something specific e.g radium. Hard water can dry out skin and hair while also having an unpleasant taste and odor.

This water testing appliance is extremely easy to operate and provides immediate results. Even if you have zero knowledge regarding this system, you will have no complications using it! All you need to do is follow the step-by-step instruction manual and compare the result with the color chart.

With the information you receive from the kit, you can find out if you’re drinking and/or using clean water. Invest in one if you want to ensure that you are only using the best kind of water at home. It really depends on where you live, the water quality and what contaminants you want to test the water for. Ideally, as per EPA recommendation, water should be tested once a year for microorganisms. Since this a test kit that you’ll be using to inspect well water, it would be nice if it also identified heavy metals in the supply. The Lab takes 5 days, after receiving the samples, to send you a report by email.

Certified Lab Testing for 50 contaminants

The testing lab of Safe Home is EPA Certified for Well Water and City Water. The certified lab testing provides the required accuracy to ensure if the water exceeds the Federal Maximum Contamination Limits. Basically, the water test kit is a convenient home appliance that detects the contaminants in your water and helps you take the necessary measures to ensure safety. This tiny tool can effectively detect contaminants, such as lead, iron, nitrites, nitrates, pesticides, hardness, bacteria, and alkalinity. The Health Metric Drinking Water Test Kit is an at-home test that checks for bacteria, lead, nitrates, and copper. It also checks for pH, hardness, and alkalinity, and you can run several of the tests twice.