Winterized Pool Leak?

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josh1014

Member
Mar 9, 2019
23
Maryland
Hoping for some insight on whether my theory makes sense:

I have an in-ground pool and spa with spillover. This is my 2nd off-season. I let the pool builder close the first time, and noticed a slow leak in my pool water level during the off-season. They inspected and realized they forgot to seal my pool lights so they sealed them during the off-season. No detectable leak since then, opened the pool myself and had no noticeable issues all season.

This off-season I let them close again, planning to take over open/close from here on out. I have an auto-cover on my pool and spa and it just got warm enough for the pool to thaw so I figured I’d take a look.

Pool has lost no significant water, all winter plugs intact. Spa however has lost about 10” down to just over the seat and all 8 rubber return plugs have fallen out and are sitting on the seat.

The equipment is still rubber plugged on suction and return side inside the pump and booster pump. The breaker has been off to all equipment (including the air blower) the whole off-season.

My guess is since they didn’t seal my pool lights, they probably didn’t seal my spa light either (I wasn’t home when they came and sealed the pool lights so who knows If they looked at the spa light, probably not). So if I have been slowly leaking around my spa light, that would explain the 10” water drop over ~5 months, but would it make sense that once the water level drops below the return lines in the spa, all the plugs might fall out? That’s the part I don’t get. Any other theories or suggestions? Thanks!
 
I don't understand the correlation between he lights. :scratch: It does sound as though perhaps water from the spa went back to the pool. It would help if you could post some pics though. Show us your equipment pad from a couple angles, your pool, and the spa. Pics say a thousand words. We'll put our TFP heads together.
 
josh1014 said:
Spa however has lost about 10” down to just over the seat and all 8 rubber return plugs have fallen out and are sitting on the seat.
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My guess is that it somehow drained a bit when there was ice. The ice bridge collapsed but had a hold on the plugs and took them out. If the returns have threads, these are much better to use. They also last darn near forever.
josh1014 said:
My guess is since they didn’t seal my pool lights, they probably didn’t seal my spa light either (I wasn’t home when they came and sealed the pool lights so who knows If they looked at the spa light, probably not)
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So the lights are removable and they plugged them just like the returns, but bigger ?

Or did you have fixture leaks originally, which they 'sealed' with caulk/ new gaskets / etc ? If this the case, it would be a one time shot and not repeated every winter.

We will hang tight for more details and pics. :)
 
Sorry guys for being unclear.

I have an auto-fill line, so for better or worse, I never noticed any problems during the actual pool season. During the first off-season, I did what I did this year which is open my pool/spa auto-covers on a nice day early in the off-season to see how things looked and noticed that my pool water level had dropped a lot since closing. I don’t recall paying any attention to the spa, im sure it had dropped, but not an alarming amount. When they inspected, they found that my 3 pool niche lights had electrical conduits that were never sealed at the time of install. They said I had been leaking out of those 3 niches the whole time. They told me the light niches are the most common location for a leak, but obviously if you never seal them in the first place…. So they sealed them and my pool has not leaked since.

My assumption was that when they came to seal those 3 lights, they probably never bothered to check if the spa light niche was sealed properly at install. Obviously if the guy didn’t seal the 3 lights in the pool, it’s not a stretch to say he didn’t seal the spa light either.

I called my PB today and they will come out to inspect that light, which I assume has to be the reason why my pool has lost no significant water and my spa has lost a bunch. The only thing I’m unsure about is how all 10 spa return plugs came out. Maybe when the freeze/thaw happened, the water level just happened to be right at the plug level?

The spa floor drain has been sealed off at the equipment the whole time, and as I mentioned, they put rubber plugs in the suction and return lines going in and out of my filter pumps so no water can possibly go in either direction. I’m not home to take any pictures right now, but let me know if that makes any more sense. Thanks!
 
josh1014 said:
but let me know if that makes any more sense. Thanks!
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Way more sense. THANKS. It's hard getting it all out sometimes. Believe me, we know. Lol. So to recap ?

You had several leaking lights and one likely went forgotten about when they fixed the others. With an auto fill during the season, it was unnoticeable. It drained this winter to remind you.

If so, it was frozen and the water lowered leaving an ice bridge with no support. When the ice let go and fell, it still had a grip on the stoppers and tool them down too.

The PB will take care of it.
 
Thanks for your help guys, but there are some new wrinkles now that I’ve collected more information and it seems I was likely incorrect about the spa light. My pool builder has not yet given me a date for them to come inspect so I’ve been trying to figure out the source myself.

I initially thought this was a slow leak because my only data point was a 10” drop over ~5 months and I was suspicious about the spa light from my previous experience with the leaking pool lights. After I posted, I refilled the spa back up, waited a week, and again the level dropped to the same mark which is approx 1” above the spa seat. Clearly, this is the level of the leak.

As per the attached picture below, there are really only 4 potential leak locations to consider that are at or below this level:
1) spa light leak
2) floor drain leak
3) leak from the stainless steel sleeve in the spa seat
4) leak from somewhere in the plaster at the level of the leak

You guys already gave me your thoughts on why the 10 spa return plugs fell out, so we’ll put that aside for now.

Since it seems to keep stopping at about an inch above the seat, and I don’t see any wall defects around the perimeter, I figured the stainless steel sleeve must be the leak source. Looking back at my photos, I happened to take a picture about a month after pool closing that still showed the spa cover pump sitting pretty high, suggesting that the leak had not gotten started yet, so something must have happened with the freeze/thaw that started this mess.

I put a rubber plug in the steel sleeve instead of that steel cap with a hole in it, refilled the spa, and unfortunately now 2 days later the water level has again fallen to that same mark ~1” above the seat. I think the rubber cap is sealing it well, so theoretically that rules out the sleeve as the issue unless the water is somehow leaking around the sleeve/plaster (looks fine to me though).

Now I have no clue what the issue is. If it was the floor drain, I figure it would drain all the way to the floor. The floor drain was air sealed at closing and is still in the closed position on the equipment side. Same with the spa light, if it was that, it should drain to around the light. I have no theory as to where it is leaking now, but clearly it is significant since it happens so fast. Do you guys have any thoughts or suggestions while I await a response from the pool builder?

7A5D1D20-4065-426F-9EA2-4EEA8EE9F78A.jpeg
 
If you suspect the steel sleeve it should be easy enough to carefully let some color dye right by the sleeve and watch the tendril flow somewhere around the sleeve and get sucked in. if it floats away then that's not your problem. This is of course with the water undisturbed so the water is nice and calm. It can also be a plumbing issue and the water stops at the same height of the crack/leak so once the water levels off the rest doesn't leak out. Just my 2 cents
 
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I just ordered some dye to help as you suggested, thanks!

You bring up another great point I hadn’t considered. I‘ve been trying to correlate the level of the leak with a landmark inside of the spa. I’ve looked back at old pictures during the construction to see how the plumbing was done. The water level correlates with about 3-4“ below my pool deck. The floor drain is obviously well below that, and the pipe going from the drain back to my equipment stays well below that mark until it comes up at the very end to go into the filter pump, so that seems pretty unlikely since I watched them air lock the floor drain and it seems weird that it would break down all the way on the equipment side.

I’m now back to my spa light. The pipe seen below is the electrical conduit for the light. This would correlate quite nicely with the level of the leak. If the light conduit is not sealed as I suspected, water is always full in the pipe, it freezes and cracks. Do you guys think this is it?


6FE1059E-58A8-4664-8D16-D1AEA9EA8984.jpeg
 
josh1014 said:
I’m now back to my spa light. The pipe seen below is the electrical conduit for the light. This would correlate quite nicely with the level of the leak
Click to expand...
*********EXACTYLY******* why 9000 build pics forever stored on the cloud will eventually come in handy. Bravo.


josh1014 said:
Do you guys think this is it?
Click to expand...
You have an open pipe, pretty much at the level the water stopped. It could be coincidental, but it's looking good so far.
 
Without guessing dye will tell you something and it's easy enough in this small area. Air lock is usually good but who knows if the valve doesn't leak so airlock didn't hold. Fill back some water before so it'll have a reason to pull in the dye.
 
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So… assuming I have it right, rather than digging up my pool deck and making a mess, they could still just pull out the light from the conduit and seal it, because this burst pipe is just an electrical conduit, it doesn’t have to actually be intact, and as long as water is no longer making its way from the spa into that pipe then I’m all set, right?
 
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The same way they did the others. Prove it and sleep better about next year after they fix it
 
I have gen one of Pentair microbrights and the design is flawed and leaks just as your test shows. I sealed using two part pool putty.. stopped the leak just not happy with the look. old gen are two piece design new model one piece.
 
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