leak or settling of 18' round pool?

[ohiosteve]

Ok.. so after a rather rainy may.. I finally got my pool up and running(diy install) Let me give you a quick rundown of my install and situation...

The pool is a dished out for 16' of the 18'.. anyways when i did the digging for the dish the ground was very soft.(we had a very wet spring..and have always had bad drainage in the back yard) after rolling and tamping it it seemed to be solid and felt stable so we set up and filled the pool.. that was about a week and half ago..

Now we come to the situation.. So Thursday of this week we had a large storm come through.. like 1" in 20 minutes..I noticed that the pool looks like it lost about an inch of water when I was at work..So I top it off and yell at the Kids for jumping off the ladder figuring I will have to find a hole and patch it in the ladder area the next day.

When I woke yesterday I did notice the pool dropped about 1/4' overnight.. so I knew i had a problem..When I got home yesterday I got in the pool and spent the next hour and a half looking for a leak that just does not seem to be there.. when in the pool I walked the entire surface and found no soft spots at all.. the did a visual inspection of every seam in the liner.. If i have a bad spot I sure the heck cant find it..

My concern is that even though I can not find a leak I still have the entire peramiter of the pool that is noticably damper then the dirt around the rest of the pool.. I did the bucket test last night and the pool and the bucket are within 1/8" of eachother.. I assume I don't have a leak but may be wrong.. after all I do have a solar cover on 99% of the pool (it folds back by the ladder) so I cant imagine that would allow for that much evaporation? speaking of this .. our night have been real cool and dry over the past week.. and of course humid last night possibly skewing results anyways.

So after my ramble I just want to see if this is possible: a far stretch but hear me out

My back yard has drainage issues ( hence it took it a week to dry enough before I could dig and was still a little mushy when I did dig).. Is it possible that my liner has settled 1 inch in the dish area due to the ground being a little soft at install? and if so could the water around the pool be groundwater being forced out from underneath.. Mind you i have an extremely high water table..like when I was digging the pool and hit 8" it began to rise and puddle in the bottom of the dish causing me to wait another two days to dig.. Everything is still level on the outside of the pool so I know the pool itself has not settled( we used blocks under all supports)..

Any thoughts?

 

[woodyp]

Can you just measure from the bottom of the dish and see if it matches what you think you dug it down to? Your last paragraph sounds totally plausible to me.

 

[ohiosteve]

thanks for the reply Woody. Sadly I have no reference point to go off at this point for measurement. I will say it did seem a little deeper to me though( could just be my imagination)

I should also state that I used a tiller in the dish area, and wait this gets better.. There is a old liner built in pool that was filled in below it.. who knows if the liner was ever removed or not.( the previous owners filled it in because the liner always floated)..

Hopefully I didn't set my pool up on a giant sinkhole

 

[ohiosteve]

just wondering if anyone else has any idea about this.. I am repeating the bucket test tonight if it does not rain

 

[ohiosteve]

bucket test last night ...lost about 1/4" ..it would seem i have a leak.. i have spent about 4 hours looking for a hole and have had no luck at all..looked for soft spots on the floor..removed my backfill to see if any water puddle up..did the dye test around both return and skimmer..all is dry around my equipment and hoses

I am at my wits end here..anyone have any suggestions?

 

[Bama Rambler]

Are you saying that you lost 1/4" more in the pool than the bucket? If so then you have a leak somewhere.

Does it leak more or less with the pump running?

 

[ohiosteve]

1/4' inch out of pool...0 out of bucket..that was with the pump on...it seems to be the same drop no mater what

That sad thing is besides the entire perimater of the pool being slightly damp I have no other signs of a leak... I just cant imagine this liner would settle this much after a hard rain

Water sure is a strange thing when your trying to find a leak.

 

[Bama Rambler]

Was the bucket sitting in the pool during the test?

You might want to do the test with the pump off just to make sure there's no difference.

 

[ohiosteve]

thanks for the reply Bama, I will do another test tonight with the pump off and the bucket in the water...any thought on the ground water theroy? keep in mind I didnt notice water loss until after a heavy rain
thanks

 

[Bama Rambler]

IF the bucket wasn't in the pool it kinda invalidates the test. The reason is that the pool won't cool down as fast as the bucket so it would evaporate more than the bucket would.