Water Leak

[Sharelick]

The company that installed my equipment said a few weeks back, when I first noticed a huge drop in the water level, there could be a tear in the liner that’s getting sealed by all the Crud and muck at the bottom of the pool. Has anyone heard of anything like this? They think that brushing and vacuuming may dislodge the dirt, that opens the leak, then it seals itself back up again with more dirt getting in there. This doesn’t seem likely to me.

For instance, I lost 3/4” of water from the pool last night. While the bucket list about 1/8” or less. Also, I tried dye around all the fittings in the pool and that did nothing.

I think instead of a liner tear, I think I have a leak from one of my pipes somewhere underground. I definitely do get a good amount of air coming out of my lines, but it’s not that bad unless the water level in the pool gets low. And since my main drain is still plugged, I’m not sure if the air is just coming in from the skimmers.

Any thoughts will be very helpful.

 

[ajw22]

It looks like the water level is low in that picture of your skimmer. Keep the water level up to halfway up the skimmer mouth. The water should be over the top of the skimmer basket by a half an inch or more.

 

[Sharelick]

It’s definitely low in that picture because there’s a water leak somewhere. That picture was actually from a few nights ago and a few minutes later it looked like this. There was more water in the pool last night after running the hose for a few hours.

 

[Sharelick]

So having refilled the pool with water many times everything seems to be working normally except for consistently losing 3/4” of water every 24hours. Last night from 11pm to 8am this morning I turned off the pump then plugged all the returns and both skimmers. (I haven’t opened the main drain, so that’s plugged to and in my next post I need to figure out how to open that up.) I still lost about 1/4” during 9hours overnight. So this means I have a leak in my liner, right?
But over the past 4 hours, with the pump running and about half the returns open and both skimmers, lve lost almost 1/2”.



So I figure we should take a vote. Who thinks a did a crappy job plugging the returns vs who think I have both a leaking liner and leaking pipes?

 

[mknauss]

1/4" overnight could easily be evaporation. What is your pool water temperature versus your air temperature?

 

[Sharelick]

Pool temp is about 78 and 70 was the overnight low with about 70% humidity. It’s a 40,000 gal pool 22’ x 41’. In my bucket tests I only lost up to 1/8” overnight, but I did not a bucket in the pool last night. I will replug up tonight and do a bucket test to be sure.

 

[Sharelick]

It was not one leak but three that I’m aware of. Leak detection company found and shut down three of my nine returns on two separate lines. Plus I still have an air leak that seems to be somewhere underground. But That’s only a minor issue at this point.
Pool is running much better now. Thanks for the help