Overall and Final Verdict
Most people imagine owning a pool to be fun summers with your family and they are, but the other side of that coin is that someone has to stay on top of keeping things clean, testing, and keeping your chemicals in line. Even with slow-release tablets (which have their own downsides), you need to keep an eye on things daily. WaterGuru has come up with a system that can do just that, the Sense tests your FC, PH, flow, and temperature every day and with that, you can feel confident when away from home or if you skip a few days and don’t go out and check things because you know where your levels are. Beyond that, with the app, they guide you with customized instructions on what you need to do to make adjustments as you go from the Sense readouts combined with their lab tests which 2 come with the purchase of the Sense. They make it easy for someone with no experience or idea of what there are doing to keep their pool in line. My biggest concern when going in was that the tests wouldn’t be accurate so for testing I did comparisons between the WaterGuru Sense and the Taylor 2006C kit that we normally test with which is often what your pool store would use to test your water with as well. What I found was our results were right in line with the Taylor results, at least when testing at the lower detail. If you do larger samples with the Taylor FAS-DPD test for Free Chlorine tests you can get down to .2 ppm vs the .5 that the 10ml test and the Sense can do but in my experience that accuracy isn’t needed.
WaterGuru also lets you buy your replacement cartridges and a lot of your pool supplies through their app which offers extra convenience for those would who would want to do that as well. The end goal of everything is to cut down on the amount of time that you have to deal with the downsides of owning a pool so you can enjoy the upsides. If money wasn’t an object you could just pay for someone to come out and handle everything of course, but if you are in my boat where that isn’t in the budget it is nice to know there are at least options to find a middle ground.
Now I did run into a few issues with the Sense as well, it wasn’t perfect. For starters, like a lot of smart devices, it was extra picky when it came to the wireless network. It wouldn’t work with a newer and more secure WPA3 network at all. It also won’t work with anything but a 2.4Ghz network but frankly, most smart devices have those same requirements but I was surprised that it also needed the SSID to be visible not hidden when isn’t a problem with our other smart devices. With our above-ground pool, I did have issues with the Sense being too large to fit our skimmer. WaterGuru does have adapters but none look to help with going to a smaller-sized skimmer which is a bummer because our skimmer is what I would consider to be the “standard’ for above-ground pool skimmers. The skimmer size also means that the Sense takes up a lot of room in the skimmer which can cause some flow issues or if your water level gets low it leaves less of a reserve in the skimmer and can have your pump suck in air. I would love to see a design that hangs over the edge of an above-ground pool and avoids the skimmer altogether. Another improvement that I think could help with the experience would be getting flow and temperature readouts all of the time or at least for the temperature it would be nice to be able to have it check without needing to use up your consumables on a full test. You can check remotely to know if the pool temperature is good enough for you to go out.
Overall I do like what WaterGuru has going on with their design and it has made dealing with our pool maintenance more tolerable. The price of gaining that help is going to run you $295 and it will also mean replacement cassettes for consumables every 8 weeks your pool is open as well. This isn’t cheap and frankly is more than I spend on chemicals for the full year. But pools are expensive and it is even more expensive if you want someone else to handle the work and that is what the Sense is doing. It’s also a LOT cheaper than paying for a pool service. So is it perfect? Not at all, but I know I’m going to keep using it and it combined with a security camera that helps us keep an eye on the pool will cause less stress when we go on vacation this year.
Live Pricing: HERE
**UPDATE**
So the WaterGuru app updated for me the day I published this coverage and they have now added support for temperature readouts throughout the day which was one of the areas that I thought it could improve. Props for WaterGuru staying on top of things and reading my mind as well! Here is a look at the update
