My husband and I are brand new pool owners. We took down an Ester Williams 15 x 30 oval and had it installed in a hole we had excavated in our yard. It will be partially underground with a retaining wall holding back the soil. Here's our issue:
The man we hired to install it initially left at lunch the first day he came and never came back. After weeks of dealing with him, we finally fired him and got another guy to do it. The problem is that this made us get it in very late in the season when the weather was getting cool. My husband noticed that the pool was losing water from one week to the next. He measured the level of the water and found that it had stopped approximately 2 inches below the highest point we had filled it, so we think there may be a hole in the liner. The water was freezing, so we have siphoned some out so we could get in with some rubber boots on and try to find the leak. I cannot find it. Now the pool has sat for weeks without being filled and the temps are sometimes below freezing at night and in the high 50's in the day.
Being the newbie owners we are, we were thinking maybe since the pool was used, there was a metal chard or something that had punctured the liner and maybe we should drain the pool, unhook the liner and lower it, and put the wall foam pad behind it. This would hopefully prevent another leak. We also have a double main drain installed which could be leaking, but it stopped after losing 2 inches. A guy at Leslie's told me today that you should never leave a liner dry and never mess with it when it is cold. Now we have an empty pool with a leak we can't find. We cannot get it closed without water and we can't fill it with a leak and we can't find the leak. We are wondering if we should count this as another expensive life lesson and plan to get ANOTHER new liner in the spring and just chuck trying to get this one working. We are VERY frustrated. The liner was over $400 and we have not even been able to swim once.
After you have had a good chuckle at our stupidly crazy situation, could you please advise us if you can?
The man we hired to install it initially left at lunch the first day he came and never came back. After weeks of dealing with him, we finally fired him and got another guy to do it. The problem is that this made us get it in very late in the season when the weather was getting cool. My husband noticed that the pool was losing water from one week to the next. He measured the level of the water and found that it had stopped approximately 2 inches below the highest point we had filled it, so we think there may be a hole in the liner. The water was freezing, so we have siphoned some out so we could get in with some rubber boots on and try to find the leak. I cannot find it. Now the pool has sat for weeks without being filled and the temps are sometimes below freezing at night and in the high 50's in the day.
Being the newbie owners we are, we were thinking maybe since the pool was used, there was a metal chard or something that had punctured the liner and maybe we should drain the pool, unhook the liner and lower it, and put the wall foam pad behind it. This would hopefully prevent another leak. We also have a double main drain installed which could be leaking, but it stopped after losing 2 inches. A guy at Leslie's told me today that you should never leave a liner dry and never mess with it when it is cold. Now we have an empty pool with a leak we can't find. We cannot get it closed without water and we can't fill it with a leak and we can't find the leak. We are wondering if we should count this as another expensive life lesson and plan to get ANOTHER new liner in the spring and just chuck trying to get this one working. We are VERY frustrated. The liner was over $400 and we have not even been able to swim once.
After you have had a good chuckle at our stupidly crazy situation, could you please advise us if you can?
