MAYDAY! Pool leaking under winter cover!!

[glockshooter]

Thank you guys. Working on it or investigating is going to be a week or two out. We're under 10" of snow, and it's currently -3F. I suspect there is a good ice layer on it now. Last time I was pumping the cover and looking under it was in the mid 30's.

As far as I know, I don't have a bottom drain. I'm assuming it would be plainly visible, right? The hopper of the deep end is smooth. I think at this point I'm below the suction and return lines as well, unless I totally misjudged the depth in the shallow end. I guess the best I could hope for now is an issue mid depth, at least the water will drain to there and not be totally empty.

Barring that, any ideas what else could have happened? I'm just shocked at how quickly I lost the water. I added 2x over the summer, but figured without a solar cover, a dry summer, and kids in and out constantly, that was par for the course. At this rate, it would have been empty by mid summer. Can a liner just catastrophically fail somehow? Anything that the closing company could have/have not done correctly?

Thank you for your help!

[PoolDoc]

I think, without inspecting the pool, all we can do is offer useless guesses. Until this cold spell moderates -- which may be in 2 *months* (due to global warming, of course ) -- there's little you can do usefully.

[CarlD]

" Can a liner just catastrophically fail somehow?"

It sure can! I had my new pool filled 10 days when on Mother's Day, 2003, I woke to the sound of a "waterfall". The brandy-new liner had split on a factory seam and was seriously washing away my sand base. Luckily, I have engineered drainage under the pool so the water didn't flood my basement. It was replaced under warranty and it's lasted 11 seasons so far.

But this "Nor'easter" has made ANY pool repairs or even assessment virtually impossible. We have 6 or 7" and we hit -3 deg last night, so I'm in the same weather system as you.

[glockshooter]

I know the repairs will have to wait. It's just the suspense that is killing me. I almost had the ice off last weekend before it started setting up. Figured I could at least flip back half at a time and look around.

[glockshooter]

Well, after a 50 degree shift, and about 2 inches of rain, my cover had enough water on it to pull the water bags in on the shallow end. At least I can look around that end for a bit and the rain is going into the pool. I guess that's about as good as I can hope for at this point.

[PoolDoc]

Sorry, but I just don't know of any practical steps you can take till things warm up a lot. One caution: vinyl sheeting can be brittle in sub-freezing temps, so be careful how you touch it.

[CarlD]

Sorry, but I just don't know of any practical steps you can take till things warm up a lot. One caution: vinyl sheeting can be brittle in sub-freezing temps, so be careful how you touch it.

You just want to make sure you have enough water in it so the liner stays in place. If you have to use a hose bib to add water to the pool, remember to shut off the water to the bib and open it to drain it so it doesn't freeze. And watch out because the hose will be brittle, too.

But it's supposed to go down to single digits again tonight! (ouch!)

Saturday night we had -3. Sunday night it was in the high 20's. This morning, less than 36 hours later it reached 56 melting most of the snow, and a few hours later DROPPED 20 degrees, and now we're due for single digits--all in just 48 hours!