Unfloating the liner for leak check.

So my liner has been floating a bit for several years ... eversince it "rained like heck" after I dropped the water level and winterized.
Friday I noticed some new wrinkles around the edge on one side so on Saturday I decided to look into it and as a bonus, the liner unzipped itself in the corner.

I tried doing the drill powered pump to pull the water out from behind the liner thing but gave up when the drill heated up too much and called the pool guy.

He showed up in 20 min with a Hayward superpump and 5 feet of flex pvc hose.
We shoved the hose down behind the liner and powered up the pump.
To my surprise, he put the water in the pool. It was cloudy but not muddy. He said not to worry about it as the filter will clear it up soon. He had me walk around the base of the liner to pull down the wrinkles. The whole process took 5 minutes before the pump sucked air, even though he was tapering the input with a ball valve.

It looked great but not perfect. He said I could do the same thing with my vacuum hose.

Today, I noticed it was still floating a bit so I took a 3' piece of 3/4" thinwall pvc and squished the end to a flat taper by heating it. Then I slipped it down the back of the liner in the corner.

Next I took a 1/2" vinyl tubing and pushed it down the pipe till I felt it hit the pool bottom then pulled it back half an inch.

Then using several sizes of short adapters and tubing I made the tubing fit pretty well into my vacuum hose.
I connected the other end of the vacation hose to the skimmer as usual and set the mixing valve more toward skimmer than drain.

The neat thing about using clear hose is I could see the water/air that was coming from behind the liner.

It took an hour or so, but I got all the other rest pf the water from.behind the liner back in the pool. The liner is snug in all the corners and the water did not cloud up. When the well ran dry, I could hear the gurgle come up the pipe and then the vacuum broke.

I zipped the liner back into its slot and put everything away.

The pool is dug into a big clay hole and it hasn't rained in weeks, so it will be a day or three to tell if I have a leak or got lucky with just left over water from spring rains stuck with no where to go.

I have 5' of concrete poured around the perimeter of the pool to make the patio, so pool dude said it was all backfilled with sand so I could drill a fence post hole outside the cement perimeter and sink a 6" pvc pipe with stocking on it to make a pump out well hole. That way I could reset the liner or keep it from floating in the first place without having to unzip the liner.

I took pix ... perhaps someday I can post them.

Berg

Thanks for sharing your experience with this. You can send pics to poolforum AT gmail DOT com and reference the URL of this thread so they can be posted in the right place.

Yeah ... its leaking.
48 hours later, no one using the pool, cover in place the whole time ... water down 3/4" and liner floating around the bottom corners and wrinkling at the top again.
Pool guy gave me the number of the "diving dude" ... who says he will find and fix all the leaks using a magnified diving mask and dye for $200.
Part of me says "pay the man", whilst the engineer me says "you haven't even tried it yourself yet ... why are you giving up so easily?"

Went snorkeling tonight.
Found a 3/8" hole about 2" under the water line, 1/8" hole about 1.5"is under the waterline and 1/8"hole hole just above the water lime so far.

Is that enough to do what I posted above?

I still have to check the floor and dye around the 4 light ports and the 3 water jets and skimmer and bottom drain.

That loss sounds about right for those holes. However, you should check the entire liner thoroughly.
How old is your liner?

I put electrical tape over the holes last night and left the liner nice and tight ... its floating again this morning ... I'll have to keep looking.
Its a June-2001 pool/liner.
I also found a hole in the fiber line that runs the perimeter of the coping ... got water in there too half way around the pool. It makes the light look choppy. I'll have to figure out how to suck that water out and seal it up then pray it doesn't algae up ... the stuff is over $3/foot. Sigh.

Is there any safe way to stay under the water and still breath using home available materials?

Found a 3/4" rip on the bottom of the shallow end last night .... it had pretty good suction on it too.