My pool is about 2 months old. It's a gunite pool with a coverstar cover built in under the coping.
I keep it covered except when in use, so it's covered about 22-23 hours per day. I've been noticing the water level drop quite slowly in the pool-- perhaps 3/4 inch per week. The drop seems to be more than I'd expect from evaporation alone-- before this pool I had a basically an identical sized pool without a cover that seemed to lose less to evaporation, and I wouldn't expect evaporation to account for much in my current covered pool.
If you're familiar with built in covers like this you know that the well for the cover requires the tile to be shorter at the well to allow the cover to retract into that space. This also means that basically one end of the pool has a short wall, and thus when people swim, play, and create waves the splash out occurs mainly at this short wall with water going into the well for the cover. My kids swim in the pool for about an hour every day at present.
What I can't seem to figure out is if I'm just losing water as splash out into the cover well, or if I'm actually leaking water out elsewhere. Does anyone know of a clever way to figure this out?
I know about the bucket test, and I haven't done it yet for a few reasons-- it's somewhat impractical with the cover on. I can leave the cover open and do it of course, but we use the cover as a safety mechanism that I'm a bit reluctant to leave off, and I'd also have to keep everyone out of the pool for a few days which isn't a popular decision these days.
thanks for any thoughts
I keep it covered except when in use, so it's covered about 22-23 hours per day. I've been noticing the water level drop quite slowly in the pool-- perhaps 3/4 inch per week. The drop seems to be more than I'd expect from evaporation alone-- before this pool I had a basically an identical sized pool without a cover that seemed to lose less to evaporation, and I wouldn't expect evaporation to account for much in my current covered pool.
If you're familiar with built in covers like this you know that the well for the cover requires the tile to be shorter at the well to allow the cover to retract into that space. This also means that basically one end of the pool has a short wall, and thus when people swim, play, and create waves the splash out occurs mainly at this short wall with water going into the well for the cover. My kids swim in the pool for about an hour every day at present.
What I can't seem to figure out is if I'm just losing water as splash out into the cover well, or if I'm actually leaking water out elsewhere. Does anyone know of a clever way to figure this out?
I know about the bucket test, and I haven't done it yet for a few reasons-- it's somewhat impractical with the cover on. I can leave the cover open and do it of course, but we use the cover as a safety mechanism that I'm a bit reluctant to leave off, and I'd also have to keep everyone out of the pool for a few days which isn't a popular decision these days.
thanks for any thoughts