Greetings TFP folks - wonder if anyone can help guide. I am losing water out of my hot tub. IG pool/spa built in '02 and have pebble tec in both. I know of reason for primary leak. Over years, water goes under the limestone rock spillway of spa where pebble tec meets the rock. You can see water trickle down the waterfall area well after pool pump is off. Only goes on until 1-2" of water in spa is removed. Then, waterfall area is completely dry. Builder didn't do tile along this side of spa (my fault as well for not knowing back then). See attached pic. Got some crazy estimates from local pool remodel companies but thinking this is job I can do with angle grinder and extra tile samples I saved from pool build. Rather than completely redo this 11' section of spillway by removing all the cap rock, I was just going to use hydraulic cement, to plug water worn channels, waterproof, and then tile/grout to hopefully seal with this 3" row of tile I would do along the water line like how rest of spa was done originally. Losing water at the top (~2") is not a huge deal since it flows down into pool. So not really losing water. However, pain in winter when that hot water is lost and have to refill spa with cold pool water. As for the "other" leak, what can be reason that spa loses 1 ft or so water when heating spa? This is far below original water line where water escapes per above. No leaks at pool equipment. And this only happens 1 out of 5 or so times when its down that much. I come back to spa and its way down. Bad check valve which bleeds water back into pool when in spa mode? Seems something wrong over at pool pad with bad valves. Upon checking, valves are in proper placement. And this only happens when in spa mode. Pool mode causes no water loss from spa (except the water line level between pebble etc and rocks at spillway). It's never all the way down, but in 2-3 hrs, if not checked, if can be down a foot or so....again, every 5th or so time. That water IS lost as pool catch basin then overflows with the amount of water being lost. In any event, thanks for any guidance or thoughts on the tile renovation work and what can be reason for lower spa water level.
Leaking spa and tile renovation project
- Thread starter davidhum66
- Start date
- May 3, 2014
- 58,391
- Pool Size
- 6000
- Surface
- Fiberglass
- Chlorine
- Salt Water Generator
- SWG Type
- Pentair Intellichlor IC-40
I ended up adding one layer of 3" tile (left over I had from original pool build in '02) and this has stopped my leak. I guess over time, the rock top layer of spa that spilled into the pool eroded and left channels in the flagstone rock (thus partially draining the spa). I angle grinded the spa/pebble tec area, applied a product called Redgard (waterproof backing) and added tile. So far, so good. Glad I didn't pay the $3000 estimate I got from a local pool company for this repair!. So far, this is holding up well.
