The Skimmer Box
The throat of the skimmer, where plastic meets the shell, cracks with ground movement. It is the single most common pool leak and one of the cheaper ones to fix.
Home / Pool Leak Detection
Topping up the pool every day and watching the water bill climb? We find out whether it is really a leak, then pinpoint it at the skimmer, light, returns or underground lines. No draining the pool, and no breaking concrete on a hunch.
Tell us what the pool is doing and we will call you back with an honest, upfront price before any work starts.
Almost every pool leak we find in Durbanville is in one of these six places, and they are listed roughly in the order we check them, cheapest and most likely first.
The throat of the skimmer, where plastic meets the shell, cracks with ground movement. It is the single most common pool leak and one of the cheaper ones to fix.
Water tracks into the light housing and drains away down the conduit. The pool level looks like it is falling through the shell when it is actually leaving through a pipe.
Suction and return lines running under paving and lawn. These show up on a pressure test, which is exactly why we test rather than dig.
The drain fitting and its line at the deepest point. If the level keeps dropping well below the skimmer, this end of the system moves up our list.
Unions, valves, the pump seal and the backwash line. A weeping backwash valve sends pool water to the drain quietly and continuously.
Cracks in the marbelite or fibreglass. This is the expensive one, and it is the last thing we conclude, not the first thing we quote.
Before you pay anyone to look at your pool, do the bucket test. Stand a bucket on the top step so it is partly submerged, fill it to the same level as the pool, mark both levels with tape and leave it for 24 hours with the pump running as usual. Evaporation pulls water out of the bucket and the pool at the same rate, so if the pool has dropped further than the bucket, that difference is a real leak. If they match, you are watching a Cape summer do its job.
That matters here more than most places. Durbanville gets hot, dry afternoons and a persistent south-easter through summer, and wind across the surface drives evaporation far harder than heat alone. Losing a few millimetres a day in January is normal and no plumber can fix it. What is not normal is topping up every day, or a level that keeps falling in the middle of winter.
There is one more clue worth noting before we arrive. If the pool loses water faster with the pump running, the leak is most likely on the pressure side, in the return lines. If it loses more with the pump off, suspect the suction side. And if the level drops to the mouth of the skimmer and then stops dead, that points straight at the skimmer throat, which is the good news outcome. Anyone who recommends draining or re-marbeliting before doing this basic elimination is guessing with your money, and an emptied pool in Durbanville clay can float or crack.
Same equipment and approach as our household leak detection work, applied to the pool and its underground plumbing.
Do the bucket test before you call anyone. Stand a bucket on a step so it is partly submerged, fill it to the same level as the pool water, mark both levels and leave everything alone for 24 hours with the pump running as normal. Evaporation affects the bucket and the pool equally, so if the pool has dropped further than the bucket, the difference is your leak. In a Durbanville summer, with wind and heat, losing a few millimetres a day to evaporation alone is completely normal.
In our experience the order is roughly: the skimmer box throat, where the plastic meets the shell and cracks with ground movement; the pool light conduit, which quietly drains water back through the pipe; the suction and return lines underground; the main drain; and last, the shell itself. That order matters, because the first two are cheap to fix and the last one is expensive, and plenty of people are quoted for a re-marbelite when the actual problem is a cracked skimmer.
No, and you should be careful with anyone who suggests draining as the first step. A pool emptied in Durbanville clay can lift or crack, and you then have a far bigger problem plus the cost of refilling at municipal tariffs. We pressure test the lines, dye test the suspect points and isolate the plumbing to narrow it down with the pool full.
Evaporation alone commonly runs a few millimetres a day in summer and much less in winter, which can add up to a couple of centimetres a week in a hot, windy spell. That is normal. If you are topping up daily, or you are losing more than roughly 5 to 6 mm a day beyond what the bucket test shows, treat it as a leak. Losing water noticeably faster with the pump running than with it off points at the pressure side, and faster with the pump off points at the suction side.
Very much so, and it is one of the most common reasons a Durbanville water bill jumps for no apparent reason, especially where an auto-filler is topping the pool up silently. A leak losing a centimetre a day on an average pool is thousands of litres a month going into the ground. If your bill has climbed and the pool has an automatic top-up, that is the first place to look.
Yes for the plumbing side, which is where most leaks are: skimmer connections, suction and return lines, valves and the pump and filter plumbing. Shell and marbelite repairs and full re-surfacing are a specialist pool trade, and if that is what your pool needs we will tell you plainly rather than sell you a patch that will not hold.
The things that come up again and again in local reviews, and the things we care most about getting right.
You get the price before we start, so there is no surprise call-out fee on the invoice.
Quick call-outs across Durbanville and the northern suburbs during business hours.
Based in Durbanville and quick to reach right across the northern suburbs.
We treat your home with care and clean up before we leave.
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