I need some advice from one of the knowledgeable pool professionals on here about the leak we are experiencing in our pool. We are losing approximately 1/2 inch of water each night with the pump off and about 1/4 inch of water during the day with the pump running. When this leak started, we noticed that there was a constant drip coming out from our broken gas heater, so I hired a pool professional to stop the leak. He replaced a switch which stopped the drip, but it still appears to be leaking underneath the heater somewhere since the area around the heater is always saturated with water and there are small puddles of water on the ground around it. The thing that is baffling me is that the equipment pad is wetter in the mornings when the pump is off than it is when the pump is running, We also appear to be losing more water with the pump off than when it is running. We lost 1/2 inch overnight with the pump off and only loss 1/4 inch during the day with the pump on. The area around the pump is dry when it is running and there are no visible bubbles. The ground around the waste line is dry. There are no bubbles coming out of the returns. I did a dye test of the returns, light and skimmer and see no evidence of any leaks. My pool guy is convinced that the water loss is caused by the leak in the heater since that area is saturated with water and he wants to install a bypass to hopefully stop it. I’m not interested in fixing the heater since we never use it but we need to get the leak stopped. It just doesn’t make any sense to me how we could be losing 1/2 inch of water each night with the pump not running if the leak is in the heater. Is there anything else in the equipment pad area that could possibly leak when the pump is off? Our equipment pad is downhill from our pool so we have lost water out the backwash line before with the pump off but that area appears to be dry right now. Since we have already done a dye test, is there any other tests we can do to make sure the leak is in the heater and not elsewhere? I’m worried that we are going to spend several hundred dollars getting the bypass installed and it will still continue to leak. I’m at my wits end because it is hard to keep the pool balanced when I’m having to add water to it each day and the pool company can’t come until the middle of next week to install the bypass.
Advice needed regarding pool leak detection
- Thread starter ba67
- Start date
- Jul 21, 2013
- 52,920
- Pool Size
- 35000
- Surface
- Plaster
- Chlorine
- Salt Water Generator
- SWG Type
- Pentair Intellichlor IC-60
Post pics of your equipment pad.
Putting in a heater bypass is the right answer until you replace the heater. Heater Bypass - Further Reading
If the heat exchanger coil is leaking there is nothing you can do to stop the leak while the water has to pass through it.
Putting in a heater bypass is the right answer until you replace the heater. Heater Bypass - Further Reading
If the heat exchanger coil is leaking there is nothing you can do to stop the leak while the water has to pass through it.
I couldn’t get the pictures of my equipment pad to load for some reason. Like most heaters, there are two pipes coming off the heater. Pipe #1 starts at the sand filter and ends at the heater. Pipe #2 starts at the heater, passes through the salt water generator (which is on the ground) and then ends in the ground. If the heater is the only thing that is leaking, I don’t understand why we are losing 1/2 inch overnight. Since the pool equipment is downhill from the pool, could we lose water when the pump is off? Is there anything else on the equipment end that could leak when the pump is off? We are losing 1/2 inch overnight with the pump off and about 1/4 inch during the day with the pump on. We couldn’t find any leaks inside the pool when we did a dye test. There are puddles of water underneath the heater and on the ground near the heater. The puddles appear to be larger in the morning when the pump has been off for 12 hours. The ground is dry near the pump and there is no evidence of any air leaks when it is running.
- Jul 21, 2013
- 52,920
- Pool Size
- 35000
- Surface
- Plaster
- Chlorine
- Salt Water Generator
- SWG Type
- Pentair Intellichlor IC-60
If you are taking pics on your phone then turn off HDR on your camera app. HDR makes the file too big for the TFP server.
This is the only image I could get to load. There are trees next to the equipment pad and a wall on the other end so it is hard to get a good picture of the entire equipment pad. You can see from this picture that there is a small puddle of water in the ground by the heater and the heater has water around it. Is there any place else that could leak in this area other than the heater? It just seems odd to me that the puddles are larger in the morning when the pump is off and we lose water when the pump is off.
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Here is a picture of our gas heater. I posted a picture from the other end last night. I did a bucket test last night with the pump off for 12 hours and lost 1/2 inch of water overnight. Puddle looks bigger than it did last night. During the day yesterday, the bucket test showed that we lost 1/4 inch in 12 hours with the pump running so it appears to leak slightly more with the pump running. Since our pool equipment is downhill from the pool, could we experience water loss from the heater when the pump isn’t running, or is this a sign that we have another leak somewhere? My pool guy is coming tomorrow to install a bypass to the heater. Is there anything else I should get him to check while he is here that could cause the pool to lose slightly more water with the pump off?