Postby lbridges » Tue 06 Jul, 2010 15:20
There three kinds of leaks, structural, suction side plumbing, and pressure side plumbing. The following is my attempt to help you isolate the problem.
Fill the pool up to its normal operating level. If the equipment wasn't already off, now's the time to do so. When the water movement becomes still, use a pencil on a grout line and mark the water level. After 24 hours with the equipment off use the pencil again to mark the new level of the water. This mark will be below the original mark.
Next, fill the pool back up to its original mark.
Now, turn on the pump and let it run continuously for 24 hours. Again, mark the level of the water with the pencil.
If the pencil marks with the pump "off" is at the same level as with the pump "on", it means you have a structural leak and should move on to dye tests around things like the light niche or skimmer (anything that penetrates the pool tank/shell), and perform a grout line examination (missing grout can indicate bond beam cracks).
If the pencil marks with pump "off" and pump "on" are different (higher or lower), it means you have a plumbing leak.
If the water loss is greater when the pump is "on" (the mark is down lower than the pump "off" line), the pressure side is leaking.
However, if the water loss is less when the pump is running (the pencil mark is higher on the grout line than with the pump "off"), it means the suction side is leaking.
That should help narrow down the problem.
Our pool is losing about 4 inches of water per day and we can't figure out where the heck the water is going!! There is no wet ground around in the yard or by pump area and that seems like an awful lot of water to lose each day. We resurfaced the pool with Ultraguard last year and it has been fine until about 5 days ago. We don't see any cracks or anything that would explain why we are losing water. Does anyone have any ideas? We only have about 2 feet left in the deepest end (9 ft) to go until completely empty!!