Leak around return

Long story short.....we used to have an Aqualuminator installed in the return. We never used the light because we don't like fighting the mosquitoes at night when swimming. I always hated trying to fill the vacuum hose with the light fixture, so we decided to take out the light fixture and put a regular return back in. Problem is when we did that, for some reason the liner has moved downward and there is about an inch gap between the bottom of the return hole in the wall and the liner. No matter what we have tried the return valve doesn't seal the liner to the wall and we have a massive leak. We are not ready to replace the liner, but we need to figure out a way to fix this.

Any ideas?

One we thought of but don't know if it would work - use a patch kit and patch the liner all the way around the return hole, then cut a new return hole through the liner and patch. Would this work?

Yes, it should, but double patch the hole. Clearly the gasket's too small for the hole and I don't think a bigger gasket will help.

Good Luck!

Thanks!

We will try to double patch it - the second patch slightly bigger than the first.