Skimmers & Throats
The joint between a skimmer and the shell is two materials meeting, and it is the single most common failure point on any pool.
Home / Pool Leak Detection
Pool leak detection in Ballito starts with a free test you run yourself, because on an exposed coastal stand a great many suspected leaks turn out to be wind and sun. If the bucket test proves a real loss, we test the shell, the fittings and the buried lines separately.
Run the bucket test first and tell us the result. Two days of waiting saves you a call-out if the answer turns out to be evaporation, which it often does on this coast.
Tested in this order, cheapest and likeliest first. For leaks inside the house, see leak detection.
The joint between a skimmer and the shell is two materials meeting, and it is the single most common failure point on any pool.
The conduit behind a pool light is a direct route out of the shell, and a perished seal there loses water quietly and steadily.
Eyeballs and return fittings that have worked loose. Cheap to reseal, and the reason fittings are checked before shells.
Suction and return pipework under paving, pressure tested section by section rather than excavated on a hunch.
A worn internal seal passing water to waste whenever the pump runs. Looks exactly like a leak and is a fraction of the cost.
Genuine cracks in the shell, checked last because they are the least common and the most expensive thing to conclude wrongly.
A pool that needs topping up regularly feels like a plumbing problem, and on this coast it frequently is not one. Ballito's pools sit on ridges and slopes running down to the sea, a great many of them fully exposed to a persistent onshore breeze, and moving air across a water surface is by some distance the most effective evaporation mechanism there is. Sun contributes. Wind does the heavy lifting.
This produces a genuinely difficult comparison problem. Two identical pools, a few streets apart, one behind a wall and mature planting and one open to the sea on three sides, will lose water at noticeably different rates without either having anything wrong with it. So the usual reassurance, that a pool losing a certain amount per week must have a leak, is useless here. There is no single normal figure for this town, and anybody who quotes you one is guessing.
Which is why the honest first step is a test rather than an inspection, and why the test costs nothing. A bucket of pool water, sat on a step so it is partly submerged, with the two levels lined up. Mark both. Leave it two days with everything running as it normally does. The physics is the point: evaporation acts on the bucket's surface and the pool's surface under identical conditions, so it removes itself from the comparison entirely.
After forty eight hours, compare. Both dropped by the same amount and you do not have a leak, you have weather, and nobody needs to attend. The pool dropped measurably more than the bucket and you have a real loss, quantified, which turns a vague worry into a defined job. There is no third outcome, which is unusual and useful.
This matters most if the house is not occupied. A pool on an automatic top-up at an empty property will replace its own losses indefinitely, so nothing looks wrong and the water account quietly absorbs it month after month. If you own holiday or letting stock with a pool, the bucket test is worth running once a season, and the meter is worth reading. Nobody is standing there to notice otherwise.
Two days of waiting. Do this before booking anybody.
Prove the loss first, then work from cheapest cause to dearest.
You run it, it costs nothing, and it sometimes means we never need to attend at all.
Skimmers, lights and returns checked first, because that is where the great majority turn out to be.
Suction and return proved section by section, so no paving is lifted on an assumption.
Draining a shell carries its own risks, so it is a last resort and never a starting point.
What it costs, how to rule out evaporation, and where pool leaks actually are.
It is a fixed figure given before we attend, covering the pressure testing of the circulation lines and the inspection of the shell and fittings. The repair, if there is one, is quoted separately once we know what has failed, because a fitting reseal and an excavated pipe repair are not remotely comparable jobs. Before you book anything, do the bucket test described below. It is free, it takes two days, and it quite often ends the enquiry without anyone attending.
The bucket test, and it is genuinely conclusive. Take a bucket, fill it from the pool, and set it on a step deep enough that it sits partly under water. Adjust until the level inside lines up exactly with the level outside. Mark both levels. Leave it forty eight hours with the pump running normally. Evaporation acts on both surfaces equally, so if both drop by the same amount you do not have a leak. If the pool has dropped noticeably more than the bucket, you do.
More than most people assume, and the variables are wind, sun, humidity and surface area rather than anything about your pool. An exposed stand catching the onshore breeze will lose a great deal more than a sheltered one a few streets inland, and the same pool loses far more in a windy October week than a still June one. This is exactly why nobody should quote a normal daily figure at you: the honest answer is that the bucket test tells you and a number does not.
If so, that is a very useful clue and it points at the pressure side of the circulation: the return lines, which are only under pressure while the pump runs. A pool that loses water mainly when the pump is off points instead at the suction side or at the shell and fittings. Tell us which pattern you have, because it changes where we start and it can shorten the job considerably.
The fittings, far more often than the shell. Light niches, return eyeballs, skimmer throats and the joint where a skimmer meets the shell are the usual suspects, because they are junctions between different materials that expand at different rates. Actual cracks in a shell do happen but they are the minority. Buried circulation pipework is the third category and the most expensive to reach, which is why it is pressure tested rather than guessed at.
Generally no, and draining one is something to be quite careful about. An empty pool loses the water pressure that was holding it in place against the ground around it, and on ground with any water in it a drained shell can lift or crack. We test the circulation lines under pressure with the pool full and inspect fittings in situ. If a repair genuinely requires a lower level, we will tell you how far down and for how long, and why.
Yes, and it is common here. Somebody needs to do the bucket test though, so give us a caretaker, an agent or a pool service who can set it up and read it after two days. We can attend, test and report with photographs. Be aware that a pool losing water at an unoccupied house is quietly expensive, because an automatic top-up will simply keep replacing it and the account will absorb the loss for months without anyone noticing.
It could, and it is worth ruling out because it costs nothing to check. A multiport valve whose internal seal has worn will pass water continuously to waste while the pump runs, and the pool level falls exactly as though there were a leak in the shell. Look at the backwash outlet with the pump running and the valve set to filter. If anything at all is trickling out of it, you have found your leak and it is a valve seal rather than an excavation.
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Run the bucket test and send us the result. If the pool and the bucket dropped by the same amount, you have weather rather than a leak and there is nothing to pay.