Hi all, Im hoping for some guidance on my next steps for what to do with this pool problem. After an exhausted effort to find the reason my pool is leaking, and $1000s of dollars later, we think we have located the problem. I have a BRAND NEW liner put in in April 2019. I thought my old liner was leaking after losing 3/4" of water a day over July/Aug 2018. A diver came and patched some very minor pin-prick holes up and it still leaked. So he came back that Fall before we shut the pool and plugged the main drain so we could test the lines in the Spring when we went to open. Over the winter of 2018/19 the pool continued to leak!! Even with the main drain plugged. We figured it had to be the liner since the pipes were empty of water when closing the pool. By April of 2019 when we went to install a new liner since we lost half of the water over winter. It was half way down the slope. Throughout that summer I had SOME leaking, but when I did the bucket test it seemed there was NO leaking. The leaking was sporadic. Some days it would leak, other days it wouldnt. I pushed this aside and thought it CANT be the liner because the pipes were empty when the leaking happened over the 2018/19 winter. Then we shut the pool in 2019 for winter only to open it up again on May 30th of this year to find 2 FEET OF WATER remaining in the deep end!!! Completely horrified, I phoned up the company that installed the liner and they told me to get a diver out to see if it was the liner or the lines. Diver checked the small amount of BRAND NEW liner that had water in it for any leaks (there was none, which was not surprising) and then proceeded to twice pressure test the lines for any leaks. NO LEAKS. In the drain he found 2 valves. 1 going to the lines and the other was a random valve going to nowhere (he thought it was a a hydro-static valve but then sussed it wasnt, the pool is also about 35 years, maybe 40 years old) Anyway, he plugged up this random valve that went to nowhere, thinking this could be the leak since the liner and the lines were perfectly fine. He left. For the next 2 weeks we lost 5/8" of water a day, (same amount of water we were losing before he came) so that wasnt the problem. I finally got a pool guy to come and after 23 science experiments and practical thinking, we have come to the conclusion it MUST be the drain HOUSING. He said I need a diver to fix that. . So back in circles we go!! Right now, the leak has slowed down to virtually nothing. I have been sweeping pollen and dirt into the drain and it seemed to plug-up the crack or whatever, for the time being.
My question is! Is there a cap one can buy to place over the ENTIRE drain unit? Plugging the drain does not work because the water leaks out before it goes down the hole. We had it plugged by the 1st diver back in 2018 and it still leaked out that winter (yes this happened TWICE ) It costs $500 bucks a pop to fill my pool up from scratch with a hose, I really dont want to drain the whole thing out to replace the drain housing until we need a new liner! JUST SPENT $4K on a new liner! Does anyone know anything about cracked main drain housing and how one can fix that? Even if its a temporary bush fix for a few years. My husband and I would love to get 5 years out of this liner before replacing it again. Any ideas or thoughts on this problem and what needs doing? Thanks so much for any advice
sorry for long rambling post...
My question is! Is there a cap one can buy to place over the ENTIRE drain unit? Plugging the drain does not work because the water leaks out before it goes down the hole. We had it plugged by the 1st diver back in 2018 and it still leaked out that winter (yes this happened TWICE ) It costs $500 bucks a pop to fill my pool up from scratch with a hose, I really dont want to drain the whole thing out to replace the drain housing until we need a new liner! JUST SPENT $4K on a new liner! Does anyone know anything about cracked main drain housing and how one can fix that? Even if its a temporary bush fix for a few years. My husband and I would love to get 5 years out of this liner before replacing it again. Any ideas or thoughts on this problem and what needs doing? Thanks so much for any advice
sorry for long rambling post...