Kudos: Simple install/setup; clear info, directions, and helpful tips
Concerns: Pricey; wish it could read additional water values
If you’re a regular reader of my reviews, then you’ll likely know that I have a swimming pool. When we purchased our home 25 years ago, I saw that it had a swimming pool and thought, “Wow! A pool! That will be so great!”
I was wrong.
You see, growing up in California, the only people I knew who owned swimming pools were rich friends, so I never had any experience with the continual maintenance “joys” that come with pool ownership. And when we bought the house, I thought, “I’ve really made it. Now I own a house that has a pool!”
Over the past 25 years living in our home, I’ve learned two important things about that pool: One, I don’t really care about swimming; my favorite part of the pool is lying by the pool, reading a book, and listening to music. (To be fair, my daughters have gotten a ton of use out of it, which is one of the big reasons why I can say, “I still own a pool” instead of, “I own a backyard pickleball court.”) Two, and this is the important one, pools require a lot of work.
There is almost always something that needs to be done. The skimmer basket is full, the pump needs backwashing, the top needs skimming, the bottom needs brushing and vacuuming, a valve, hose, or gasket has broken, or the chemicals are out of whack.
Last year, my pool water slowly turned septic. I kept dumping chlorine and algaecide into it but to no avail. My oldest daughter came to me and said, “Daddy, there’s something wrong with the pool. The water is the color of a Disney villain.” Do you know that certain shade of evil green Disney uses? That.
Turns out the cyanuric acid levels had become dangerously high, making all the chlorine I was dumping into it ineffective. The solution? Drain out the pool water, refill, and start over.
So, when I get up in the morning and when I come home from work each day, the first thing I do is walk to the back door to check on the pool to make sure it hasn’t gone Disney villain again while I’ve been away.
Five years ago, I reviewed a solution called pHin. This was a device that bobbed around in the pool and automatically took vital water readings that it would then send to your phone. This preemptively notified me of issues like the pH or sanitizer getting out of balance and also let me check the water temperature. I loved this product. In fact, I loved it so much, that I gladly ponied up the $99 fee for the yearly subscription after my free trial ran out. But, unfortunately, after pHin was acquired by Hayward, the decision was made in 2021 to shutter pHin and discontinue the service.
Kind of like living with automated shades or lighting; once you’ve broken free from the shackles of constant, manual test-strip dipping, it’s tough to go back.
Enter the new Crystal Water Monitor, which was developed by Justin Miller, co-founder and CEO of Crystal Water Monitor, who also happened to lead the development and launch of pHin back in 2017. And, just as The Who sang years ago, “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss,” but this new boss also comes with some smart improvements.
Why You Should Care
Admittedly, a smart pool monitor is a bit more fringe compared to the products we typically review here. However, it’s very likely that you and/or many of your customers own pools, and knowing about the Crystal Water Monitor will help you to be that smart technology concierge who can recommend solutions and technologies to your customers.
Also, Crystal will be introducing a new in-line, “professional” version of its smart monitor that will require installation in the pool plumbing that would be up the alley of what your techs could do. If you’re interested in becoming a dealer, they suggested reaching out to [email protected].
While there isn’t any public API for the system currently, they say it is on their to-do list.
First Impressions
Right from the opening of the box, it was clear that Miller had learned from pHin’s failings and made improvements to the Crystal Water Monitor, which was built from scratch — the software and hardware have been completely redesigned, and it is more accurate.
“We knew what we were doing [after pHin],” Miller says. “We knew what not to bother spending our time on, so we were able to go much faster developing and getting to market.”
One thing Miller and team learned from pHin was that, with a floating monitor and sensor, moisture eventually gets into the electronics and it short-circuits. I had that experience with my pHin, where one day the unit just stopped sending readings. Miller said this is an inherent design flaw in all floating sensor designs, which — living 24/7 in the water — are prone to water seepage and eventual damage and failure of the electronic components.
So, the first big improvement is that the actual monitor sits outside the water, and a four-foot waterproof cable connects the sensor to the monitor via an XLR-like locking cable. This allows for greater durability and longevity, while also maintaining continuous real-time readings without the risk of damaging the components and hardware. With the sensor constantly submerged, it takes a more accurate water temperature reading as opposed to pHin, which just took surface readings that are frequently several degrees warmer.
Also, since the monitor isn’t floating in the water, it is less obtrusive and won’t get in the way of swimmers or people trying to relax in a hot tub or sucked into the filter.
“We didn’t just build another product, we built a smarter, more intuitive solution that truly solves the real challenges homeowners face in maintaining their water,” Miller says.
The sensor, a 7-inch long, 1.5-inch diameter black tube, also feels far more substantial.
pHin was a two-part system, having a Bridge that lived inside the home that connected to Wi-Fi and communicated with the floating monitor via Bluetooth. This had a limitation of “less than 80 feet (with a clear line of sight),” which could be an issue in larger homes. Now, the 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi receiver is built into the monitor, and practically every project these days has Wi-Fi out by the pool.
Unlike pHin, the Crystal Water Monitor also has user-replaceable AA batteries and a replaceable sensor, so when the batteries or sensor reach end-of-life, it’s a simple replacement. No need to throw out the whole device and get a new one. As with pHin, all the components are covered by a lifetime warranty as long as the customer maintains an active subscription ($99/year; first year included with purchase).
There are two different versions of the Crystal Water Monitor system — one for chlorine/bromine-treated pools and another for saltwater pools — which you select when ordering. The difference is in the ORP (oxidation-reduction potential) sensor, which is gold-tipped for saltwater and platinum-tipped for chlorine/bromine. Crystal’s VP of customer success, Jesse Green, says, “Gold-tipped sensors work better in saltwater and will last longer than the platinum-tipped sensors. If a customer switches from a chlorine pool to a saltwater pool, they will need to contact us to get a new sensor. If they are a saltwater customer going to chlorine, however, they can continue using the gold sensor without any issue.”
Included in the box along with the monitor and sensor are a pack of ten six-way test strips, three AA batteries for the monitor, a mounting plate with double-sided mounting tape, a pipe/pole adapter mount, and two zip ties. There were no instructions in the box, but rather a small card that prompts you to download the app at either the Google Play or Apple App Store.
Setup
Starting with the app, you create an account and then add a pool or hot tub, tell the app how you sanitize (chlorine, bromine, salt), and then estimate the volume in gallons so it can make accurate dosage recommendations and set the pool’s location (which is handy if you have multiple homes with pools). You then connect the monitor to your account by pressing a button on it to put it into setup mode, and then link it to your home’s 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi network. I had a couple of hiccups where this linking would fail partway through, but after repeating the process a few times, it was finally successful, and it hasn’t fallen offline since.
Physical installation is equally simple. I cleaned off a portion of my pool deck, stuck the mounting tape onto the deck, stuck the mount onto the tape, plugged the sensor into the monitor, and then attached the monitor to the mount and dropped the sensor into the pool.
Once installed, the monitor will measure your water for pH, ORP, and temperature roughly once every 10 minutes, or over 1000 times per week, the benefit being you get a better look at the overall condition of the pool water instead of seeing a random spike or dip. And if push notifications are enabled, the app will notify you if something needs attention.
A nice touch is that, after setup, the app sends you a “Welcome!” message inviting you to schedule a startup appointment to “ask any questions you may have and go over the product basics.” A great way to ensure that users understand how to get the most out of the product.
The app offers a host of helpful information for troubleshooting technical issues (“How should I mount my monitor?” “How to Reconfigure Wi-Fi,” “I’m not receiving push notifications”) to pool care (“Why is my Free Chlorine Level so high?” “I can’t add my chemical”).
A link to the support page on the company’s website has a ton of additional information under the “Water Chemistry” heading with explanations of all the different metrics — pH, ORP, alkalinity, hardness, cyanuric acid, free chlorine, total chlorine, phosphates, total dissolved solids, the Langelier Saturation index, etc. — that a pool owner would be interested in, as well as how they affect your water’s health and how to address issues.
Regarding ORP — which was new to me — I asked Green why this is the best metric of pool health, say, as opposed to free or total chlorine levels.
“What you’re really trying to determine is, ‘Is my pool being sanitized effectively?’” Green says. “Measuring free chlorine is one way to get at that answer, but it’s not the best way. For example, if your free chlorine is at 3 ppm, is that good, or not? The answer is, it depends. It depends on your pH level, your CYA level, and several other factors. ORP is a more direct measure of sanitizer effectiveness, it takes all those other factors into account. If your ORP is good, then your pool is being sanitized effectively, period. If it’s low, then you can look at why: Is it the pH level, is it the CYA level, or is it the chlorine level?
“Sometimes we get new customers who tell us that they constantly have algae issues and can’t seem to get ahead of the game. There could be a few reasons for this, but often it’s because they don’t have enough sanitizer in their pool to support the amount of Cyanuric Acid (stabilizer) they’ve added and are in a state of chlorine lock. [The exact, dreaded, evil-Disney-green water situation I had!] The ORP measurement prevents chlorine lock by ensuring that you always have enough sanitizer to kill bacteria, viruses, and algae. This is the way commercial pools around the world manage and report their sanitizer levels to their local municipalities.”
The company also maintains an active blog on its site that has other tips for pool care. For example, did you know that vinegar and lemon juice can be used as an environmentally friendly way to lower the pH level in your pool without chemicals?
The app can also show you how long since the monitor last reported, the battery level, and the Wi-Fi signal strength.
Performance
To be effective, the Crystal Water Monitor is a three-part system of monitoring, notifying, and adding chemical recommendations to keep pools looking their best.
When you check the app, it displays the pool temp and how long ago it took a measurement. If everything is good, the background is blue. If something needs attention, it’s orange. And if something is dangerous, it’s red. (Pray you don’t see red…) Being able to remotely check the temp is seriously a great feature. If you tap on the display, it opens a deeper level that shows you the pool’s pH and OR, as well as results from the latest test strip readings.
You can look at the history over a day, week, month, three-month, or year period, helping you to see any trends. For example, I can see that my pH levels seem to slowly rise every few days (meaning I probably need to check/adjust the alkalinity) and that the ORP levels vary with the temperature.
If the pool needs something like an adjustment to pH, sanitizer, or shock, it prompts you to add it, but the app takes the guesswork out of how much you should add by letting you scan in the barcodes of your preferred chemicals and then telling you exactly how much to add. While pHin was limited in the chemicals it supported and couldn’t suggest how much you should add to raise/lower total alkalinity and total hardness, the Crystal Water Monitor lets you use practically any chemical you’d like. If you enter something it doesn’t recognize, it will prompt you to list the product’s primary ingredient and its percentage.
It will then say things like, “Add 14 ounces of Clorox pH down” or “Add 1 pouch shock treatment,” and then monitor to make sure the results are as expected. If an action needs to be performed, it will alert you by sending a push notification, such as to take a monthly test strip reading, or if a level has gotten out of balance.
Regarding the test strips, you can use different ones if you choose; just tell the app which brand you’re using. The app can also track Free Chlorine, Total Chlorine, Salt, Phosphates, and Total Dissolved Solids measurements, and will maintain this historical data for the end user, and provide instructions on what to do if these levels get out of bounds.
Another nice change is how you enter this data. While pHin required you to take a picture of the special test strip against a colored chart, this was something I always struggled with. The lighting was never right, my shadow was in the way, the camera didn’t line up with the window correctly, etc. While you can still take a picture of the strip on top of a plain white sheet of paper, you can also manually enter the figures/colors, which makes it a lot more foolproof.
Once you start seeing readings and making adjustments, you’ll likely wish that the Crystal Water Monitor read additional water values, like the dreaded CYA or total alkalinity, instead of relying on test strips. According to Green, “The probe contains only three sensors: pH, ORP, and temperature. There are no capabilities of the sensor beyond that. To get ‘extra’ elements like TA, CH, CYA, etc., we would need to develop a different sensor. The existing hub is the vehicle we use to connect to the Internet, and store and transfer data to our servers, where all the calculations are done, [so] the future possibilities are endless.” So, you’re saying there’s a chance!
Do pool owners really need a Crystal Water Monitor? No. You can take dip strip readings, figure out the chemical dosages, and go check a floating thermometer. That is, if you’re home; if you’re away on vacation, you just need to hope things are okay. Ultimately, it monitors and notifies you of issues before they become problems. You also don’t need a garage door opener, automated lighting, or a remote control for your theater system, but isn’t life just a whole lot nicer with them? That’s the Crystal Water Monitor.
619-766-5865 — crystalwatermonitor.com
Product Specs:
- Continuous automated pool monitor, measuring pH, water temperature, and Oxidation-reduction potential (ORP) every 10 minutes
- Works with pools and hot tubs of all sizes
- Compatible with chlorine, bromine, and salt pools (separate sensor required for salt pools)
- Provides simple and exact dosing instructions for chemicals
- Wi-Fi (2.4 GHz) connection to network
- Includes first-year monitoring service, $99/year following; lifetime parts warranty while subscription is active
