If your swimming pool is leaking, you may feel like you are a bit helpless. Fortunately for you there are ways to tell where the pool is leaking, and how much it is leaking on your own before you get a professional out to check it out. These tests will not always be quite as accurate as a full pressure test, with sonar detection, but it is definitely a good start! These will save you time and money, and they are simple to do.

First Test! The Bucket Test!

This is a very important and widely used test, even by professionals.

1. First thing you need to do is gather all of your materials.
   1. A Bucket
   2. A permanent marker or electrical tape
   3. Water
   4. Place your bucket on a step inside your pool, preferably on your second step, but make sure that it is not fully submerged under water
   5. Fill up the bucket with water so that it is about 3/4ths of the way full.
   6. Mark on the inside of the bucket either with the tape or with your pen where the water line is.
   7. Mark on the outside of the bucket with the tape or your pen where the pool water line is. You can also mark on your pool wall, though I would not recommend doing that with a permanent marker.
   8. Turn your pool equipment completely off, so that it will not automatically restart on its own.
   9. Wait 24 hours and measure the difference between the previous day's mark and the current water level.
   10. If the inside marking and the outside marking have the same difference between them and the water level, you do not have a leak, but if the outside marking is farther away from the water level than the inside marking, you are losing more water than normal evaporation.

That is a very simple test, but very effective. It is normal to lose around ¼ inch of water per day due to evaporation, and maybe, at times, even up to ½ inch per day. But if you are losing ½ inch per day, I would highly recommend checking for a leak.

The next two suggestions may require you to be a bit more familiar with your pool system, but shouldn't be too difficult.

The next thing to check before calling a leak detection professional is your backwash. If you have a backwash line, there are typically 2 places to check for this. The first is the end of the pipe where your backwash flushes out. If your pipe goes underground, often the pipe will re-imurge at the front of the house and point right back down into another larger pipe. It can also lead out into an ally or drain. This may take some searching. Once you find it, look and listen for dripping or water flowing. The other place to check for a backwash leak is often very close to where the backwash pipe comes out of your filter. Many equipment set ups put a see through "eye ball" there to check and see if water is flowing. These tests both will usually be seen only when the equipment is on and running.

There is one more test that may take a few days, but it might be worth the time. It is simply going to be closing and opening the correct valves. Here are some examples:

1. If you have a spa and a pool connected. Turn off the spa jets, fountain, and main drain, so no circulation can get to the spa.
   1. Note: Often there may be once pool jet that is in the spa. If this is the case, you will need to find a plug at a pool store or hardware store and plug this line.
   2. Measure the pool levels in both the spa area and the pool .
   3. Leave entire swimming pool off for 24 hours.
   4. Measure to see if the swimming pool level has dropped, and/or if the spa level has dropped. This should at least give you a better idea of the area that the leak is in.

Once you have done these tests and are certain that there is a leak, you are very equipped to call a professional. Let them know what you have done yourself to find the leak. They will impressed!

For more advice, help, or to contact a swimming pool leak detection professional, click on this lea(n)k.

www.trueblueleakdetection.com