Air from skimmer line

I bought a house that had been abandoned for 5 years and I'm told the pool was not used for at least 10 yrs. I had the lines tested by a leak detection company and they came back as being fine. I've had the pump up and running for about a month now and I've come to learn that I'm not supposed to see any air in my pump, but I am. I have a main drain, a drain in the connected spa and 2 skimmers. Through trial and error I've determined that I'm drawing air in the skimmer line (I get no air when I open either of the drains, but when I open the skimmer line I get air). I've been running off the main drain since I discovered this since I don't want to stress my pump.

Anyway, on to my question. Does the above described scenario indicate that I have a leak in my skimmer and/or the skimmer lines? Or could it be something else that I might be able to detect and repair myself? Any suggestions for troubleshooting this are appreciated because I'd like to avoid calling out the leak detection company again.

I should mention that as part of rehabbing the pool we replaced the heater, pump, filter and one of the skimmers, which was cracked. We also repaired cracks in the pool, which were leaking. Finally, another test I did was to plug each skimmer, one at a time, but that did not seem to make a difference. We sucked air with either skimmer plugged. Oh, and the problem is not my water level. We suck air even with the water half way up the skimmer opening.

I think that covers everything.

Thanks in advance,
Mike

Welcome to the forum. Seems like you have the diagnosis pretty correct. I assume you are seeing air bubbles out the returns when sucking from the skimmers and are not just referring to the air bubble that is sometimes seen under the lid of the pump basket. If your pipe connections are accessible, potential leak sites, then you could try going to recirculate mode on the filter, bypassing it if you can. This would give you a quicker response observing bubbles from the returns. Try dripping water on any suspected joints or if you don't care about appearance try silicone seal or vaseline if you can wipe it off easily. If you hit the leak, the bubbles will stop quickly. Depending on the noise level the open end of a stethescope hose can pick up air leaks pretty well. Doesn't take much of a leak to cause your problem. See if any of these suggestions help and let us know how you're progressing.
Al

Thanks for the reply. I'll give your suggestion a try this evening. A couple of questions though. If there was a leak at my pipe connections, wouldn't water be leaking out? Particularly when I turn off the pump? Also, could you please explain in more detail how to use the stethescope tube to detect leaks?

Thanks,
Mike

Another update... a friend of mine came over today and since he has a pool I decided to get his opinion on the problem. I went to show him the problem by turning off my pump, opening the skimmer valve and then turning the pump back on. Within a minute we couldn't see any air in my pump and there were no bubbles coming out of the returns. So the problem has mysteriously gone away. Any ideas of how this could happen?

The only thing I can think of is that when I observed the problem my water level had gotten low and air got into the system. Then after adding water to the pool maybe the air remained in the system for a while and slowly worked its way out? I'm just taking a wild guess here. I'm glad the problem is gone, and relieved that there don't seem to be leaks, but I'm concerned that I don't have a good explanation for the problem occurring in the first place. Any ideas?

Welcome to The Forum!

Unfortunately, sometimes a clear explanation isn't available. We might guess as to why this happened and suddenly fixed itself, but you'd be left with 1/2 dozen guesses and no way of knowing what it really was. In my 20+ years of working on pools, there have been 20+ cases where I've ripped the system apart, found NOTHING that needed to be fixed and put it back together and the problem was gone... (My guess is that sometimes these things just want a little attention

Be thankful that your problem is gone but, if it occurs again, let us know and we'll help you.

I understand what you're saying, Ted. Thanks for the input and I'll be back if the problem crops up again.