Above Ground Pool - Slow Leak

We bought a house in June with an 18x 33 oval above ground pool that needed a new liner. We installed the liner ourselves (far from perfect, many wrinkles, and not 100% level). We are thinking of this as a "starter pool", and may replace it in a few years if we get a lot of use out of it.

A week after installing it, we lost several inches due to a pump issue but that was fixed.

About 6 weeks ago after having guests over and using the pool all weekend, we noticed the water looked low (maybe a inch loss in a day), so we started watching and taping it. We have been losing about 1/8 of an inch per day since taping it. It is now a few inches past the skimmer and jet, but does seem to have slowed even more since going past both. It has probably gone down 1/8th of an inch in the past week.

We have tried inspecting it for holes, using dye, etc. but have had no luck. My husband read somewhere online that the hole is probably smaller than the size of a pin with that rate of loss (?)

He also thinks that the slowed loss after going past the skimmerk/jet could just be evaporation, but that doesn't really make sense to me...we live in NY and it has not been very hot lately...

Any ideas? Thanks!!

Hi and welcome!

You can test evaporation with the simple bucket test. Fill a 5 gallon bucket with water and see if it loses as much water as the pool. If it does, it's evaporation and you should cover the pool when you are not using it.

Otherwise, you have a leak and need to be a bit of a detective about finding it. First: Do you notice it loses the same amount of water when the pump is running as when not? If it loses more when the pump is running, examine every fitting and hose, pump and filter for wetness--a sign it's leaking. If it's not there, then search the area around the pool for dampness, both the ground and the pool walls. If you find it, that's the area to localize your search.

To use the find-a-leak dye, you need to turn off the pump and let the water get very still. Add dye in the area you suspect it's leaking and add enough. Wait. If there's a leak, the dye, after 10 min to an hour, should collect there showing you the hole. Then you can patch it, using patches and Boxer 100 glue, which works underwater. If you have extra liner left over from your install (if you did an overlap liner) or kept some of the old liner, that makes excellent patches. I always double-patch. First has an inch of material on all sides of the hole. Second has at least an inch of material all around the first patch.

Underwater patching is a pain in the neck, all way down, but it's do-able and the patch is permanent.

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