How to Test Water at Home with a Water Test Kit

The quality of the water we drink and use daily is essential to well-being and health. Polling indicates 61% of Americans worry “a great deal” about polluted drinking water.¹ Whether you’re concerned about contaminants or chemicals in your well water or the overall pH of your city water, at-home water testing kits can give you an accurate range of results.

Water testing kits come in a couple varieties, and the one that’s right for you will depend on a few factors. You’ll find some testing kits combine methods, including both strips and color disks depending on which contaminant you’re screening for.

Before you dive into at-home water testing headfirst, we’ll walk you through the steps of choosing the right water testing kit. Each of the following considerations plays an important role in whether you’ll get definitive answers about the quality of your water from an at-home testing kit.

Test strips are the most common method of testing water quality because they’re affordable and easy to use.

Fill a test container with a water sample, dip a test strip in, swirl the container, and wait a few minutes. Then you’ll compare the color changes on the test strip to a color chart included in the kit. Test strips can indicate the type of contaminant and its ppm (parts per million, a.k.a. its level of concentration in your water). Test strips aren't as precise as other methods, they give a range that can pinpoint concerns.

Instead of strips, these water testing kits have you add a few drops of water to a container with powder, shake it, and then place it in a viewing box. Rotating the color disk provided, you’ll compare colors with the container until you find a match. These kits are reported to have better accuracy than test strips for certain types of contaminants such as bacteria.

1. Identify a water source
2. Choose a testing method
3. Decide which contaminants to test
4. Calibrate testing to EPA standards
5. Ensure accuracy of results

Most water quality test kits are intended for one-time use. You should also consider whether you plan to follow up an initial home test with testing that uses a professional lab. Because most test strips give a range of results rather than a specific number, the increased accuracy of color disk kits might be worth the cost.

What your kit tests for is a critical measure of how useful the results will be to you. Different water sources are more likely to have certain kinds of contaminants. For instance, well water is frequently used in rural areas where runoff from nearby fields could affect levels of pesticides or fertilizer toxins in the drinking water.

Additionally, finding out more about the pH levels in your water (acidity versus alkalinity) and general hardness can be useful to counter quality issues like taste or smell.

Many homeowners enjoy having their own well water, but it can be susceptible to toxins in the watershed. A comprehensive water testing kit like WaterSafe is worth the additional cost to ease concerns about contaminants.

While the EPA doesn’t endorse specific home water testing kits, it does provide guidelines for how often to test your drinking water and a list of risk factors that could lead to contamination. If you have city water, your municipality often has to provide testing results publicly every year to prove the safety of your drinking water. For those with well water, the EPA has easy-to-use contaminant tables so you can check your results against acceptable standards for safe drinking water.

It’s also worthwhile to plan on getting a second opinion, especially if your water testing kit turns up any glaringly high levels. You can start with a basic, inexpensive kit like the one recommended below and then plan on following up with professional testing through a lab if the results are concerning.

This budget kit from First Alert covers all the basics, including pesticides. Its limited contaminant testing is versatile enough to give you a good baseline on both well water and city drinking water.

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1. Gallup, “Americans’ Concerns about Water Pollution Edge Up”