Drinking Water Test Kit

by moondog on January 14, 2023 with No Comments

Safe drinking water is one of the most important survival resources. You could survive for weeks without food but you can’t last longer than a few days without water. Being able to determine if your water is safe to drink after a natural or man-made disaster (such as Government incompetence and malfeasance as in Flint Michigan) wasn’t easy until now. TESPERT sells a 19-parameter test strip kit which allows you to test for water contamination and quality such as bacteria, ammonia, lead, and chlorine.

This TESPERT kit comes with a variety of sealed packets. Each packet is a type of testing kit containing 2-25 test strips. The whole kit comes with 100+ test strips, a plastic pipette (eye-dropper), and a small test tube.

The majority of the kit seems to be focused toward those testing swimming pools and aquarium water. But a number of tests are also applicable toward my interest, testing for drinking water contamination. While I can not accurately test all of the kits (nor do I have the expertise to test lead or water contamination), I chose to test 2 of the packets. If they could detect contamination of water, it’s likely the other tests are of the same quality.

AMMONIA TEST
I added 10ml from a urine sample (mine) to a beaker containing 100ml of water. I tested this solution using the Ammonia Nitrogen test strip but after 30 seconds, I did not see evidence of a color change. Adding additional ml of urine, I did see a small color shirt in the strip. While the test strips work, and may be helpful for aquarium fish, it is not sensitive enough to detect drinking water contamination for my comfort.

BACTERIA TEST
I added a drop of Yakult, a pro-biotic drink with live bacteria to a 50ml of water and added a drop of this sample to a Bacteria test card. The test requires 48hrs for results to appear on the card, so I stored the sample packet at room temperature. 48hrs later the blue test card showed a white contamination area confirming the presence of bacteria.

CONCLUSIONS
I am no expert, nor do I claim that this kit can guarantee safe drinking water, but what I tested confirmed the potential for these kits to be used to help inform the user. Unfortunately the sensitivity and speed of the tests make them impractical as a replacement for boiling or chemically sanitizing your water after a natural disaster.

TEST PACKETS

Water hardness

Free Chlorine

Iron

Copper

Lead

Nitrate

Nitrite

Total Chlorine

Cyanuric Acid

Alkalinity

Zinc