Stumbled on a coolant PH test strip hack at a shop near Dayton

Was at a small job shop outside Dayton last month and the lead operator showed me how he uses cheap aquarium test strips to check coolant PH instead of the expensive electronic meters. He said it catches bacterial growth way faster and costs like $8 for a hundred strips. Has anyone else tried this or got a better cheap method for coolant maintenance?

2 comments

2 Comments

maryadams2d ago

My buddy Dave runs a small machine shop in Cincinnati and he tried this exact trick about a year ago. He was sick of his expensive pH meter giving him weird readings and costing a fortune in replacement probes. Now he just dips the aquarium strips in his coolant tank every morning before the first job runs. He said it caught a bacterial bloom in his sump two weeks before his old method would have flagged it. Have you compared the strip colors to a standard chart or just eyeballing it?

parkerb752d ago

Wait, did you say he caught a bacterial bloom a full two weeks before his old method would have flagged it? That's insane, I had no idea those cheap aquarium strips could pick up on something like that so early. I mean, I've been eyeballing the colors against the chart on the bottle, but now I'm wondering if I should actually cut one out and laminate it for better accuracy. Maybe it's just me but I always assumed those strips were way too basic for anything other than a fish tank. That's a pretty huge win for Dave though, saved him a ton of headache and money for sure.