Update on my Leak

[Poconos]

I'm a little confused about the type of pool. You mention a shallow end but imply the sides would be pulled in by weight of water on the cover. Doesn't matter for what I'm going to say though. Forget the food coloring, it could empty your wallet. A couple things I recommended in the past have been to get a dye marker at a dive shop and make your own dye. Another is to get some raw beets, dice them up and boil the heck out of them. makes a real concentrated, safe, red dye. Can eat the beets afterwards. I've developed a technique for finding small leaks using a small garden sprayer, a long piece of small diameter (1/2" or so) PVC pipe, and thin auto vacuum hose. Hose is taped to the pipe and jury rigged to the sprayer. Hose extends beyond the bottom of the pipe for 6" or so. Idea is to 'very slowly' position the hose with the pipe and squirt just a little dye in an area. Must have real still water and be within a few inches of the leak to see anything. I homed in on this technique searching for a leak at the deep end of my IG pool a few years ago. Also developed a method of laying a good patch without getting in the pool. If this stuff is helpful I can find the thread(s) where I posted in much more detail. Let me know.
Al
Edit: Saw in your other thread it's an AG pool so forget my question.

[b2001]

Also developed a method of laying a good patch without getting in the pool. If this stuff is helpful I can find the thread(s) where I posted in much more detail. Let me know.

Yes, if you can dig it up, it would be helpful. I have a feeling before it's done, I'm going to get good - at least at trying to find leaks. Of course, once I find the leak, assuming I'm able, the next question would be patching. Thanks ...

[Poconos]

Something else I forgot to mention. One way to get some rough idea of the depth of the leak is to measure the leak rate accurately. As the water level approaches the leak level the leak rate should slow. ex: in my situation with an 8' deep end, I topped off the water level and just let it go down about 1' below the skimmer as I recall. I was losing about 3" a day that calculated to be about 50 gallons per hour based on the surface area of the pool. Using a ruler and referencing a known spot like a point on the skimmer housing, I measured every hour or so and computed the rate. In my case the rate did not change indicating the leak was deep. In the limit the leak rate would go to zero at the leak level. I suspect if the leak had been at the 3.5' shallow end the pressure change with a 1' drop would have measureably slowed the leak. Something else I did to see what I should be looking for with the dye was to use a garden hose on the bottom of the pool and start a siphon at the same rate as the leak. Using the injected dye I then knew what I should see as far as the dye being sucked into a leak. I'll go dig up more info in the archives.
Al

Edit: Moving this thread to the 'pool construction and repair' forum. May get more exposure there as a better fit.
Edit: The pics for the leak patching are off the forum so I'll just have to dig them up and type the words. I'll get to that a little later today.

[Poconos]

Found the following thread:

http://www.poolforum.com/pf2/showthread.php?t=101

So.....look at my post #9 and see if you can see the 3 pics. This was posted almost 2 years ago so as an update, the patch is holding just fine. Last Summer I tried to peel up a corner and could not. Seems to be stuck real well. If you don't have double sided tape, which I didn't, just use masking tape folded on itself. The PVC pipe was 1.5" and provided the needed rigidity to be able to push on the patch. Hope this helps.
Al

[b2001]

I've been out of town for two days. As per Dennis' advice I added water to try to get the level to 2' but only got it to 19" before I had to go out of town. It's gone down 1 1/2" in two days so it seems that my leak might indeed be on the side in the 12" to 19" (from bottom) level. I'm going to see where it seems to settle at.

Thanks, Al - I'll look at your thread over the next couple of days ...