leaking pool, hired leak detect company, but they can't give me a solid answer

[kamejinjess]

Hi Everyone, I'm new to the forum.
Got a headache recently with our pool and hopefully someone here could help giving us some inspirations...!

Long story short --
Our pool is leaking so I've hired a leak detect company, paid $700 for their visit and I'm still left complete confused what could be wrong with our pool...

When the leak detect expert came, they tested pressure on both the pool and spa's plumbing lines, and told me there are no signs of leak and all plumbing lines are working fine. And so their "best guess" is that the cause of water loss has to be the cracks and broken tiles at the bond beam (we do have quite a few broken tiles along the waterline).

Since they can't give us a solid answer, we had no choice but to do research online and tried testing our pump on & off as well as placing the jandy valve in different positions to try narrow down the possibilities. And we've noticed the more we have SPA RETURN line opened, the greater amount of water loss we end up observing.

Here's what we've observed in a (6-hr) pump test:
100% SPA RETURN = nearly 2-3'' water drop in the spa
80/20 POOL vs. SPA RETURN = almost 1'' water drop for the entire pool & spa lavel
100% POOL RETURN = no visible water drop

When I consulted the leak detect company about this result, they think it should be the bond beam cracks in spa that's letting all the water escape.

However, here's a new finding that made us completely confused --

We just tried filling the spa water level to its absolute maximum (way above the regular waterline, and all the cracks & broken tiles are completely submerged in water), and we left the system off overnight for 12hrs. This morning we checked, and water didn't drop at all. We assume this would indicate that the cracks in spa is NOT the major leak source, is this correct?

Now the funny thing is we can't understand why the pool is not leaking when the pump is OFF, (and only losing water when both the pump and spa return is ON); Theoretically this would indicate that something must be wrong with the RETURN lines, correct? Yet we were told that the plumbing lines are all working fine. This simply doesn't make sense to us.

Does anyone know what can possibly be leaking given this weird situation we have?

========================================================

Thanks to everyone who shared comments and insights with us!
So we decided to remove all the tiles in our spa and indeed found the leaking source is a long crack in the bond beam. Now need to figure out how to patch it up ourselves...! yikes, more headache...

 

[ajw22]

Welcome to TFP.

Show us pics of your equipment pad and your pipes and valves.

Also show us pics of your spa since you think that is the source of the leaks.

 

[ferretbone]

"We just tried filling the spa water level to its absolute maximum (way above the regular waterline, and all the cracks & broken tiles are completely submerged in water), and we left the system off overnight for 12hrs. This morning we checked, and water didn't drop at all. We assume this would indicate that the cracks in spa is NOT the major leak source, is this correct?"

Do that same test with the spa pump running. The spa only, Because running water moving under force and none running water with no force over those cracks are very different in the speed of a leak.

 

[kamejinjess]

Welcome to TFP.

Show us pics of your equipment pad and your pipes and valves.

Also show us pics of your spa since you think that is the source of the leaks.

Hi! Thank you for the tips.
However, I can't seem to be able to add attachment photos (it won't show after I uploaded the pictures and hit save)... And when I try to insert the image in the message content, an error message pops out saying "we ran into some problems"...

 

[mknauss]

an error message pops out saying "we ran into some problems"...

The Forum server host is having issues with attachments. Try again later. Thank you.

 

[sktn77a]

For $700, I would expect a LOT more than a pressure test and shrugged shoulders. They should minimally have gone around the entire pool with food dye to test their hypothesis of a leak at the waterline. A professional leak detection company should have used something like a LeakTronics leak detector. Sounds like these guys don't really know what they are doing.

 

[Bperry]

For $700, I would expect a LOT more than a pressure test and shrugged shoulders. They should minimally have gone around the entire pool with food dye to test their hypothesis of a leak at the waterline. A professional leak detection company should have used something like a LeakTronics leak detector. Sounds like these guys don't really know what they are doing.

Agreed. I paid ~$300 and they came, did the dye test, had a microphone setup to listen and patched up some cracks in my skimmers that were found to be leaking.