Hey guys. I’ve been chasing around a few issues all summer and hoping someone can help me out. When I first opened the pool this spring I noticed I was losing some water, but dealing around the entrance to the skimmer seemed to fix that (at least to where I didn’t notice it anymore). I’ve also been battling an air leak since last summer. I found a crack in the priming spigot line where the spigot screws into the PVC, and that fixed my priming issues but I still had an air leak. Changing the o-rings on the pump diffuser and main pump housing o-ring seemed to help a LOT. I had a small bit of water coming from where the motor and basket housing meet but haven’t seen that in a while. Otherwise I don’t see any water around the equipment pad. 
I have metal stain issues from either my fill water or an old heater (removed now) so I’ve been using metal magic, and the white cloud it creates seemed to be enough to plug up whatever remaining air leak I had for most of the summer.
But now I’m back to a super small water loss and also a bigger air leak again (bubbles in the strainer basket). I’ve done a bucket test off and on for a couple of weeks now and sometimes I lose more water from the pool than the bucket and sometimes it looks the same, so not sure if that’s negligible or not.
The air leak seems to be worse when the vacuum is plugged in. When I’m not using it there’s enough unrestricted flow that it’s fine, but when I plug the vac in the bubbles in the strainer basket grow to where there’s a couple of inches of air in the basket and also some making it to the filter (pressure release blows air for a minute before water starts coming out).
On top of it all my pump is now making a sound I haven’t heard before, sort of like a higher pitched “Shhhhhhhhh”.
I thought I might have an underground air leak, but I should mention also that I’ve tried closing off the main drain/skimmer valve and the side port valve separately (without the vac in use) to see what that does to the air in the strainer basket and both seem to have the same result. I’d think that if it was one of the lines then one of the valves would show it? At the same time, when the vac is plugged in for a while and the pump is shut off, I can see some air bubbles coming from the inlet line into the basket, but this doesn’t happen without the vac plugged in so I’m not sure what to make of that.
Sorry this post is so long but if anyone has any thoughts or advice I’d greatly appreciate it!
I have metal stain issues from either my fill water or an old heater (removed now) so I’ve been using metal magic, and the white cloud it creates seemed to be enough to plug up whatever remaining air leak I had for most of the summer.
But now I’m back to a super small water loss and also a bigger air leak again (bubbles in the strainer basket). I’ve done a bucket test off and on for a couple of weeks now and sometimes I lose more water from the pool than the bucket and sometimes it looks the same, so not sure if that’s negligible or not.
The air leak seems to be worse when the vacuum is plugged in. When I’m not using it there’s enough unrestricted flow that it’s fine, but when I plug the vac in the bubbles in the strainer basket grow to where there’s a couple of inches of air in the basket and also some making it to the filter (pressure release blows air for a minute before water starts coming out).
On top of it all my pump is now making a sound I haven’t heard before, sort of like a higher pitched “Shhhhhhhhh”.
I thought I might have an underground air leak, but I should mention also that I’ve tried closing off the main drain/skimmer valve and the side port valve separately (without the vac in use) to see what that does to the air in the strainer basket and both seem to have the same result. I’d think that if it was one of the lines then one of the valves would show it? At the same time, when the vac is plugged in for a while and the pump is shut off, I can see some air bubbles coming from the inlet line into the basket, but this doesn’t happen without the vac plugged in so I’m not sure what to make of that.
Sorry this post is so long but if anyone has any thoughts or advice I’d greatly appreciate it!
