Leaking Out Bottom

[Kenny22]

Hello! After a long SLAM turning first my pool from a swamp to crystal clear, I finally felt the stress of battling my pool release. A week later, that stress flooded back as my pool had sprung a leak.

I found that the water was exiting at the bottom of the frame, and it just so happened to be under the pallet my pump system has been sitting on. I got some goggles, and found a small hole, and a few small tears throughout the liner along the wall. I patched everything I could find through several slow laps around the pool looking up and down.
The water coming out of the frame has definitely slowed down, and I’m assuming it takes some time for water between the liner and wall from before I patched it to get out, but now that I’ve patched all I can find I’m not sure what to do next. I should say, the water coming out at the bottom fills a little puddle a couple feet wide and maybe an inch or two deep, where the pallet holding my pump system was before I moved it. I used a shovel to move the water, and it slowly filled back up, so that’s my way of checking if it’s still leaking I guess.
I know the liner is 4 years old (as is the pool entirely), though I just bought the house in December, so I don’t know how good the care of everything was in its first few years.
The other concern I have besides the leak is that leaving my pump system not hooked up is obviously not good. Should I raise the water level back up anyway, and keep it going so I can properly keep the pool clean despite the leak? Or should I leave it because the water doesn’t matter if it’s e

More info:
I thought it was the filter system at first, so I let the water get below the skimmer box to see, but it kept going down a little. I inspected the whole pump and filter system many times, h it couldn’t find any issues, so I disconnected it all, and moved it in my garage for now.
After moving everything, I found that the leak was coming out of the bottom of the frame of the pool.

Lastly, and I’m not looking for any sympathy at all, but want to provide the info on my situation, my wife broke her arm this weekend, and I am at the end of my rope between stressing about that, and how we’re going to take care of our 7 month old with me needing to work (from home, luckily), and the pool slowly leaking into our yard. Until our tax return comes (our situation is complicated this year, and the IRS is super behind) I can’t really afford to just buy a new liner or anything major right now. COVID times have been brutal.

 

[mariane]

It looks like there are more holes/tears in the liner. Will you be able to get back in and look for more? Did you find any near the equipment pad? How fast is it leaking? Why did you disconnect the equipment?

 

[Kenny22]

I will be able to get back in. I did find a few near the equipment pad, and patched them up. I unhooked the equipment originally because I thought that was what was leaking and wanted to look for cracks or damage to the equipment (I didn’t find anything, it all looks good).
I am thinking I’m going to hook everything back up, fill the water level back up to get the pump running and keep the pool clean, and as long as it seems to continue leaking I’ll keep iterating looking for and patching issues in the liner.

It is leaking very slowly now. It was slow before, but noticeable. Now it’s so slow that I think it may even not be leaking, but I can’t really be sure. I’ll just have to do a very thorough inspection of the liner every time I get in until the water in the yard gets soaked up by the ground and I see that no more water is escaping.

 

[Pv2]

you can mark your water level with painters tape or somesuch and/or set a 5 gal bucket full of water in the pool on your steps or something, water at the same level inside and out. then check in 12 or 24 hours to see if the pool dropped more than the bucket.

also you can try food coloring in a small squirt bottle near suspect areas. if there are holes the color will get sucked to the holes. water has to be still, no pump running.

holes on walls can be found by letting water "leak" out until it stops, that will be where the hole is somewhere at the waterline.

 

[Kenny22]

you can mark your water level with painters tape or somesuch and/or set a 5 gal bucket full of water in the pool on your steps or something, water at the same level inside and out. then check in 12 or 24 hours to see if the pool dropped more than the bucket.

also you can try food coloring in a small squirt bottle near suspect areas. if there are holes the color will get sucked to the holes. water has to be still, no pump running.

holes on walls can be found by letting water "leak" out until it stops, that will be where the hole is somewhere at the waterline.

Yeah, bucket test is good to know for future, but in this case I am positive it’s leaking right now, so I could do it, but it won’t give any new information. I am thinking of using a color syringe to test the holes I’ve patched, and check the other suspect areas though.

Since the pool is draining so incredibly slowly at this point, waiting for water to drain is in feasible.

My current plan is to get the pool operational with the pump system again, and search for issues in the liner and patch them when I find them until The yard seems to dry up. Like I said, the leak is very slow, and some of the puddles have even already dried up, so what I patched definitely helped, but there is still a leak. Just gotta find the remaining tears.

 

[Kenny22]

Update:

With everything going on with my family, haven’t had a chance to get back in and look for more leaks, but I did get to see that a lot of the ground that was getting soaked has dried, and the water level is not going down at an abnormal rate (to the best of my knowledge, which admittedly isn’t much).

Hopefully the weather will be good today (rained all day yesterday) and I can get in and look for more issues, but I’m so relieved that the patches I’ve put in already were enough to stop flooding my yard so much. Probably going to use the bucket test to verify the leak is resolved after the next search.

Also, I did fill the water level back up the day I said I was thinking about it, and hooked the pump system back up, and have had it running since. It’s working fantastically.