How to Test Water Quality at Home

Testing your water quality at home is a responsible move.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, before you test your water you should contact your water supplier and get a copy of your annual water quality report. Once you've done that, in order to test water quality, you need a water quality kit. There are numerous water quality kits on the market, but they all are pretty much the same in procedure: they give you various strips which show you the amount of chlorine, copper, iron, and the pH level of your water as well as the hardness of your water.

Things You'll Need

• Water quality test
• Glass

Instructions

1. Fill a glass with cold or warm, but not hot water.

2. Dip the strip which is labeled as the test for pH, alkalinity, chlorine and hardness in the glass of water. Keep the strip submerged for at least five seconds, waving it back and forth in the water.

3. Remove the strip from the water, shaking off excess droplets of water. Wait 20 seconds. As you wait, get the color chart ready so that you can match up the colors on your strip with the ones displayed on the chart.

4. Complete the color matching within 10 seconds. For example, a red or dark blue square for pH levels is dangerous, but a gray-green square is fine.

5. Repeat these steps with the strips for iron, nitrate and copper.

Hydrogen Sulfide

1. Turn on the cold water tap and leave it on for two minutes.

2. Inhale deeply as the water runs, smelling the air. If you smell an odor of rotten egg, you have a problem with hydrogen sulfide.

3. Repeat this test with the hot water tap. If you smell a rotten egg odor on both taps, then you have a hydrogen sulfide problem. If it's just one tap, the hot tap or the cold tap, then it's likely that hydrogen sulfide is not a problem.

References

• Pro Lab Inc: Water Quality
• EPA: Water FAQs

Resources

• Read this Article in Spanish