There’s some exciting news out there for anyone who is using hydrogen peroxide in their float tanks.
Taylor Technologies, launching into a brilliant meta-testing endeavor, has tested their own H2O2 testing kits…in saturated epsom salt water! After only a year of them strategically ignoring Ashkahn’s weekly emails, they finally got back to us, verifying that the Taylor Hydrogen Peroxide titration test kit K-1825 and the Taylor Hydrogen Peroxide titration test kit K1826) are accurate in our saturated MGSO4 solution.
Here’s the letter they sent our way (shared with permission):
Why is This Important?
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This is now the only testing method that has been confirmed to produce accurate test results inside of our epsom salt solution. No matter what else happens, we can at least say that we know our H2O2 levels.
The only other major test we know of that has been done on test kit accuracy in epsom salt water was conducted by the NSF on the reliability of a few different testing methods for total and free chlorine. Their results showed that none were accurate, but that with at least one of test strips you could manually calculate the rough value of chlorine, based on the consistent scale by which it was wrong.
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Here’s a quote from their conclusion:
While this investigation gives no direct recommendation or endorsement for real world practice, the LaMotte test strip gave relatively consistent results across the test range, and could be used, provided the user has an understanding of the low recovery rates, and by incorporating a correction factor based on this data to readings between 0 and 5 ppm.
Essentially: “don’t necessarily implement this in the real world, but theoretically you could calculate the chlorine levels based on the incorrect value of one of the test strips we analyzed.”
Knowing that we now have a test kit that is actually giving correct readings inside the float tanks is incredibly valuable for anyone using H2O2. It’s also a good sign for things to come, and Ashkahn has already created a weekly task generator on HelmBot to start harassing the next testing company.
What Should I Do Now?
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If you’re using H2O2, you should make sure that you’re stocking the Taylor Taylor Hydrogen Peroxide titration test kit K-1825 or the Taylor Hydrogen Peroxide titration test kit K-1826. At least until others are affirmed to be reliable, these are certainly the units to use.
If you’re not using H2O2, hang tight – hopefully we’ll have good news for you soon! Between this and the float tank calibrated flow meters, it certainly feels as though manufacturers from larger industries are starting to pay attention to us (with a little friendly nudging).
A Small Addendum on Small, Internal Tests
Before we had final confirmation that they were accurate, Float On already had a fair amount of trust the Taylor K-1825 & K-1826 kits based on some internal tests that we ran. For posterity, I humbly submit to you a link to one of our bucket tests that I documented, testing the accuracy of the Taylor kits.
Update from August 2021:
Another company has now tested and verified that their Hydrogen Peroxide testing works accurately in float solution! The company is Indigo Instruments, and thanks to the work of Jules Turner over at Ogo Float, they have recently tested their H2O2 test strips in a saturated Epsom salt solution and found them to work accurately. Below you can find the documentation where they explain their testing procedure and verify their accuracy.
Unlike the Taylor test kit, these are test strips. If you’re not familiar with the difference, test strips tend to be regarded as a little harder to get consistent readings from, because they often have less detail in their testing levels, and because reading the levels can have more room for subjective interpretation from the person taking the test. In a lot of places test strips are considered mostly geared towards residential systems, and many health departments do not allow their use in commercial settings (there is, of course, a lot of nuance with this, so these are just generalities). In general, we recommend using more sophisticated testing methods in commercial float centers.
