- Apr 23, 2008
- 342
Hey folks,
I was working on my 18X36 IG Vinyl pool this afternoon and vacuuming and stuff. Anyway, I get home a few hours later and it seems like I've lost an inch of water!
There's only about 1 inch of water above the skimmer line. With the pump on, all of the sudden every 30 seconds it's acts as if there's not enough water in the skimmer and sucks almost all of it out and it has to catch up and get more water in there. Clearly I need more water in there.
Here's the thing...I've had the pool open for a week now. It hasn't done this before and we've only been getting rain...no heat streaks or anything. I'm confident I had more water in there before. In fact...I was out there for 3 hours this afternoon and it wasn't doing this!!!
I did clean out my DE filter twice really well (including once yesterday) which certainly loses water...but that much water? When I clean it, I refill it twice to rebump it and then drain it again, to really get the DE out. Could that be the cause of this much water loss? Again though...it wasn't doing it this afternoon.
I'm afraid that when I was vacuuming, the bristles (which were kind of hard and old) scratched the vinyl and caused a leak. Is that possible and if so could it lose that much water in a short period of time? Or maybe a suction was formed while vacuuming, which was too much pressure on the pipes and they cracked under ground. I say that because a few times the vac really got stuck to the floor due to suction (like I almost couldn't pull it off the ground there was that much pressure).
Also, when I turned off the pump, there was all this noise still occurring like air leaking and it was gurgling too with water going in and out of the pump basket. I hear air escaping where the motor meets the back and when it's on there's droplets falling from there. So I might need a new gasket, but that can't account for this water loss, right?
What do you guys think? Do you think I have a leak? What tests can I run to try and figure out what's going on? And is there anything preventative I should do just in case?
Thanks
I was working on my 18X36 IG Vinyl pool this afternoon and vacuuming and stuff. Anyway, I get home a few hours later and it seems like I've lost an inch of water!
There's only about 1 inch of water above the skimmer line. With the pump on, all of the sudden every 30 seconds it's acts as if there's not enough water in the skimmer and sucks almost all of it out and it has to catch up and get more water in there. Clearly I need more water in there.
Here's the thing...I've had the pool open for a week now. It hasn't done this before and we've only been getting rain...no heat streaks or anything. I'm confident I had more water in there before. In fact...I was out there for 3 hours this afternoon and it wasn't doing this!!!
I did clean out my DE filter twice really well (including once yesterday) which certainly loses water...but that much water? When I clean it, I refill it twice to rebump it and then drain it again, to really get the DE out. Could that be the cause of this much water loss? Again though...it wasn't doing it this afternoon.
I'm afraid that when I was vacuuming, the bristles (which were kind of hard and old) scratched the vinyl and caused a leak. Is that possible and if so could it lose that much water in a short period of time? Or maybe a suction was formed while vacuuming, which was too much pressure on the pipes and they cracked under ground. I say that because a few times the vac really got stuck to the floor due to suction (like I almost couldn't pull it off the ground there was that much pressure).
Also, when I turned off the pump, there was all this noise still occurring like air leaking and it was gurgling too with water going in and out of the pump basket. I hear air escaping where the motor meets the back and when it's on there's droplets falling from there. So I might need a new gasket, but that can't account for this water loss, right?
What do you guys think? Do you think I have a leak? What tests can I run to try and figure out what's going on? And is there anything preventative I should do just in case?
Thanks