How can determine if Ozone is still being produced in our tap?

Question

We have a tap (hot/cold) with an ozone injector in the pantry. For people that want to know why - it's the greenest way to kill bugs in the kitchen, especially the bench top.

• I seem to recall that when we first got it, I could smell the ozone
• I can't smell anything now.
• The red led indicates standby.
• Blue led is visible on the tap, when you run it - indicating it's working.
• Similarly, the controller shows a blue led under the working label when the tap is running.

How can I tell that ozone is being produced? Is there some test I can perform?

It is 6 years old and we were the second user of this tap, in New Zealand. The intention is that it injects some ozone into the water. I used to get a tiny whiff if I had a glass of water near my nose. Note that

• It's not for drinking, in the photo you can see the drinking tap on its's left (right of the photo).
• It is for cleaning only.
• It does come with a warning that if you wanted to drink it, then leave it standing for 10 minutes.

It's not more dangerous or safer than chlorine. And chlorine is used everywhere - in the pools and in urban drinking water. We are in a rural area with water from concrete rainwater tanks. When in urban areas, we choke on the tap water - the chlorine is so bad (worldwide)!

Maybe it's us on this side of the world, but our spa pool and swim-spa both came with ozone disinfectants built-in. And I have the same question about their longevity.

Answer 1

There are two easy options that I know of:

1. Aqueous ozone test strips. At least one company makes them. Use your favorite search engine to find them. An example brand is SenSafe.
2. An ozone test kit. A few companies make these. They look more precise but are also more expensive per test.

Oh, and if you can smell the ozone, it's not great. Ozone isn't good for your health in significant concentrations. I'm also suspicious of any claims that the ozone does anything other than treat the water headed through it. Don't treat it like sanitizer or bleach - if it was this simple to turn water in to something you could use for cleaning, every restaurant would be using such a dispenser instead of sanitizer solution.