Yet another swimming pool leak question.

[Tom J]

I have a 16X32 above ground pool. I noticed that when I opened my pool this year, literally half the water was gone. Since then I need to fill it every 3 days or so. I looked around the edges of the pool and saw no signs of water...bone dry. So I chaulked up the water loss to evaporation even though that is a lot to evaporate.

I was out mowing the lawn the other day and noticed an area around the pool that was saturated. The water seems to go down about an inch a day so I ruled evaporation out.

I heard about dye tests? There are pool stores around but none of them have any type of kit. One of the stores said to use food coloring? Any suggestions? Thank You

[Tom]

Tom wrote:>I have a 16X32 above ground pool. I noticed that when I opened my

Stop wasting water. Let the sanitizer level go down to nil, drain it to some surrounding needy vegetation, then fix the leak. Tom Work at your leisure!

[Travis Jordan]

The 'dye test' usually means the use of a colored dye dropped into the water near a suspected leak. The dye will be rapidly sucked into the leak, thus disclosing it's source. I use Phenol Red, the chlorine test dye that you probably already have on hand in your pool chemical test kit.

My guess is that the leak is somewhere at or below the 'half full' waterline. Are there any fittings protruding through the wall in this area? If so, check them first.

[Bill Schnakenberg]

More than likely there is a hole in the vinyl somewhere in the bottom. Most likely around the filleted edging where the vinyl does not have as solid a backing as the sides and bottom, or it could be anywhere else on the bottom. Possibly done with a cleaning tool or even a toenail. Your best bet is to get a pair of goggles, get in and inspect the whole bottom. You may be lucky and observe an indention in the vinyl where the combination of the water passing through the hole, and the weight of the water above, has sunk some of the sand base into the now saturated dirt below. You can probably patch the hole with an underwater vinyl patch kit. If your liner is beyond its advertised life (or close to it), you may want to look into getting a new liner. I had to replace my 15 year old 18x36 inground pool liner 2 years ago. It started to become porous, and had lost a lot of its elasticity due to its going through 15 years of 80+ degree (F) seasonal weather changes.