Life of a Liner Patch

[CoffeeBean]

Hi,

I seem to have lost over a foot of water over the winter. Since I drained the water below the skimmer before putting the solid winter cover on, I can only assume that the water is leaking out of the liner. I don't see any tell tale wet spots around the pool anywhere but it's been wet here too.

I have 3 separate patches down there; 2 are 3 years old, 1 is two years old. How long can a person expect a vinyl patch to remain intact?

Thanks.

CoffeeBean

[waste]

CoffeeBean, Hi - happy spring!

You may not have 'lost' any water (but this is dependent upon a couple of things).

You said you lowered the water below the skimmer, did you plug the skimmer? (the return is lower than the skimmer mouth, so it probably was plugged)

Did you have an air pillow or support under the winter cover? Did you manage to keep most of the water off of the cover? Did the pool freeze?

The reason for all the ?s is that if the skimmer wasn't plugged and either you had a bunch of water on the cover, or the pool froze, the wieght of the water or ice (well, not the weight of the ice...) could easily have slowly pushed 1' of water into the skimmer where it just drained out, the loss might not be noticable until either the cover was pumped off or the iceburg in the pool melted.
Another posibility is that the cover has a small hole in it and as you were pumping it off, you were also removing pool water.

On the 'durability' of patches, it's a crap-shoot - some only hold for a few days, others can last 5+ years (in my experience) - the biggest variables are probably how well the patch was applied and whether the surface under it has held up.

I hope that your water exited via an unplugged skimmer! and that your patches are holding fine and you haven't sprung a new leak!!

[CoffeeBean]

Hi Waste, Happy Spring back at ya! (ah choo!)

Thanks for the reply and the new concept to think about. I dropped the water below the vacuum port and filled the skimmer with styro balls before covering the pool. The face plate covers the skimmer and vac port but is a bear to put on and may have a gap in the rim somewhere.

I recently pumped a good 3 -4 ft of water off the cover top - yeah, once the iceberg melted. It went from 20F to 60F in about a week here with little in between. I couldn't pump it during the winter because the water on top was solid most of the winter. I don't know if the pool water froze. It isn't frozen now.

We tried a solid cover this year to see if I could avoid the spring pea soup syndrome. I was going to use a pillow but because I had to drop the water level below the skimmer, (I couldn't get the face plate installed with the water higher) didn't have enough extra on the sides to accommodate a pillow and still secure it.

I did note that the water is still clear! I think that I'll double check the patches while the water level is lower (Might have a better chance at staying submerged!) and might re-patch them just for security's sake but you might just have nailed the reason for my water loss.

Thanks. I feel better.

CoffeeBean