New pool leaking

[brg88tx]

I have a newly constructed pool and i believe it is leaking. I have performed 3 24 hour bucket tests and all 3 showed a 1/4" drop inside the bucket and a 3/4" drop outside the bucket. My pb is downplaying this and saying 3/4" loss per day is normal.

Am i right im assuming that anything more than the water loss amount inside the bucket is not normal? Are bucket tests accurate? Thanks

 

[Bama Rambler]

You are correct! if the bucket is sitting in the pool water then any difference in loss is a leak. You should tell the PB the process you used to determine it was indeed a leak.

 

[tpjimmie]

Yes it is leaking, I just went through this with my new pool. Took two months to finally resolve. See 'Our Pool Started Feb 28th Idaho' in this forum. Although my PB it wasnt an argument. Probably because I am in the water and wastewater business, and know about evap tests. My leak was 3/4 and inch in 12 hours. You are a little less, but you 'do' have a leak. I have spreadsheet which calculates pool evap, heat loss, covered or uncovered based upon surface area and volume, that my PB gave me. Email me and I will send it to you, so you can prove to your PB that it is not evaporation loss. jhunt at pharmereng.com I now dont even have 3/4 loss a week.

 

[MajorDIYer]

The bucket test isn't accurate to laboratory standards. If there's a wind, the sides of the bucket will protect the water inside it, meaning less water evaporates. Water in the bucket might also cool faster than the pool since the pool has a constant supply of warmer water rising from the bottom, so maybe less evaporation there too. The surface of the water in the bucket is more stable than the pool, meaning even less evaporation. 100% accurate, no, but it still should be fairly close and definitely not a 3:1 difference. You have a leak somewhere.

 

[tpjimmie]

We use 6' diameter pans to test ponds per regulatory agency standards, but MajorDIYer is right, it will not be completely accurate with a small bucket. I kept my pool and bucket covered with a heat blanket while doing my tests.

 

[Ohm_Boy]

I'd be curious as to the real difference from wind shielding, as I think that some of that difference may be made up by turbulence inside the bucket which also makes it harder for the air to get out.
Thermal variances should be really negligible since the bucket is submerged into the same water heat source, with only the bucket as a thermal barrier. It may provide a phase shift for heating, but no real difference over the time period.

 

[brg88tx]

Yes it is leaking, I just went through this with my new pool. Took two months to finally resolve. See 'Our Pool Started Feb 28th Idaho' in this forum. Although my PB it wasnt an argument. Probably because I am in the water and wastewater business, and know about evap tests. My leak was 3/4 and inch in 12 hours. You are a little less, but you 'do' have a leak. I have spreadsheet which calculates pool evap, heat loss, covered or uncovered based upon surface area and volume, that my PB gave me. Email me and I will send it to you, so you can prove to your PB that it is not evaporation loss. jhunt at pharmereng.com I now dont even have 3/4 loss a week.

where was your pool leaking? from reading on the internet the 2 most common areas are skimmers and light niches. i have 2 led lights. i sent the pb an email requesting a leak detection test and will see how he responds.

 

[tpjimmie]

Mine ended up being the light niche cord rubber grommet. Electrician didnt use the one that came with the Pentair lights. He just packed with Buytl tape. Quite a long process to get to this point. First time they drained it they went over every inlet, skimmer, redid the lights (obviously didnt check for this rubber grommet) and re pressurized pipes. Still a leak, so the 2nd time they drained it they applied a product called Aquron to seal the plaster and gunite. Still same rate of leak. So they let it drain so they could rule out the skimmers and tile line. 3rd time was a charm, drained it and took apart the light niche. Water came pouring out of the conduit behind the buytl tape. My PB was great about all of this and paid for each fill, chems, and heat to get back to where we started. It was a huge pain to have the pool down in prime swim season, esp. since they stared in Feb. But I really needed to make sure the pool was complete. They could have waited until fall to do this, but I was tired of adding water every 2 days to keep the level above the skimmer line.

 

[brg88tx]

Update: pool builder responded to my e-mail. He first sent the plumbers back out to pressure test the lines, no leak. Than he called the plaster company back out to check for leaks in the plaster and around the lights and skimmers with some dye. They found the one of the skimmers was leaking where the mouth of the skimmer meets the waterline tile. Tile guys remortered the area and I did a bucket test last night and it's no longer leaking and my autofiller no longer runs constantly. Amazing how much water can leak out of a very small crack in the mortar.

My advice to any new pool builders is to do a bucket test BEFORE you issue that last check. My pb was fairly responsive (after saying the leak was normal) but if I had made the last payment before i brought this up i don't think he would have been so helpful.