My Pool Has a Leak. Now What?

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CleverUsername

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May 19, 2018
17
Medina, OH
How do I begin to fix this? How do I find the leak on the inside if the pool? We've had a cold spell the last few weeks and the water is way to cold to go in there.


How long should a pool last before this happens? Was told this pool was 2 years old when I bought this house this winter. Sound reasonable?

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That looks exactly like how my rust problem started, bubbling through from the back side. You will have to drain the pool, remove the liner, sand off the surface rust and patch any rusted through areas with new steel, then spray the entire pool wall with rust inhibiting primer.

I did not repair my pool in a timely manner and had a catastrophic failure during Harvey. It started to rust around 7 years ago, but I was nervous about draining and repairing the pool. I should have ignored my anxiety and made the repair!
My pool went from this, 2014: 90EFFBE9-DE9C-4233-A1E8-FC11840C0AFA.jpg

To this, 2017:IMG_0032.jpg
To this 2 days later:IMG_0040(1).jpg

This section of wall looked like this on the outside:IMG_0059.jpg
And this on the inside:IMG_0060.jpg

Once you peel back the liner you may decide this is more work than you are willing to take on. If that is the case, take down the pool and replace it.

My liner never had a leak. As best I can tell, the moisture came from condensation between the liner and pool wall.
 
FML. How old was your pool when it began to show the rust spots on the outside? Is it likely my pool is older than 2 years as the previous owners claimed? There's actually water spraying (sometimes) out of the worst hole. Was hoping I could do some kind of patch to get us through the summer. Dont have the time or money to drain this pool and start over. So frustrating.
 
I think my pool was about 5 years old when I saw the first signs of rust and it was all pretty much confined to that one area. Water spraying out of the hole would indicate a liner leak at that spot. I would patch the liner and work on the pool in the fall.
 
That's the course of action I decided on today while running errands. I purchased a vinyl patch kit from the pool store and headed home, optimistic. (The store claimed they did not have any liner remnants). However, the patch was a complete failure. A moment after applying it and smoothing it out (it looked and felt perfect) the whole thing became a winkley, bubbly mess. I think I must have applied too much glue. Water began spraying out of the hole worse than ever. (Not sure why THAT happened...). I regretful peeled off the sorry patch and tried again, but it did the same thing. The liner has an awful texture now where all the glue was. I gave up and started draining the pool. Those photos of the blowout were haunting me. The wall looks much darker around where the rust spots are. I'm curious how bad the rust really is under the liner.

How much water do I need to drain out to be able to safely peel back the liner in that area? The holes are about 2.5 feet off the ground in a 4 foot deep (from top of wall) pool.

Also, I was hoping I can use a much larger patch to just completely cover up the area of the liner that is ruined from the glue (about 5"x5", I initially tried to patch two holes with a single patch). Should that work, or should I plan on replacing the entire liner (assuming the rusty wall is salvagable)?


Or maybe I should just try patching again when the hole in the liner is no longer under water. Is there any way to remove all that excess glue that's dried on there?

I dont want my children to get sucked through the pool wall. How dangerous is this amount of rust?
 
The dangerous part is that you don't really know how much rust is there on the inside of the wall. You will probably need to drain the pool completely to be able to peel back the liner. It is odd that the liner reacted that way to the patch.
 
Water is heavy and you won't be able to move the liner out of the way until the water is pretty low. Water constantly pushes out equally in all directions to seek level. You would need to do this when you have a couple days available to work on the repair. Its not something where you work a little and come back to it in a week. I'm also afraid your liner stretch out if you partially drain and manage to pull the liner back and find some way to hold it up.

Did the patch not hold at all or did it just look bad?
 
The patch didn't hold at all. Water was coming out of the hole more forcefully with the patch in place. It bubbked up and there were myriad ways for water to get to the hole.


I've drained the pool, now how do I take off the plastic parts around the top to pull back the liner? This pic is not of my pool, but I circled the parts I'm talking about. Don't know what they're called and haven't been able to find any videos that show how to remove them. Do they all need to come off or can I remove the parts above the rust?

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Here is some rust prep information from Krylon's website. You will need to remove the loose rust by sanding or using a wire wheel attachment on a drill. Then clean the surface with rubbing alcohol on a cloth to make sure there are no oils on the metal. I'm not sure what the paint you are using is, but you need to use a rust stabilizer or rust converter to stop the rusting process, let that dry and spray it with a rust inhibiting primer. If you have a thin piece of sheet metal, you can cover the edges in a couple of layers of duct tape and then tape it to the pool wall. This will give the area a little reinforcement.

Can You Spray Paint Over Rust? | Krylon
 
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