Shell And Structure Testing
Dye tracing at cracks, joints and around fittings to establish whether the shell is actually the loss or merely the suspect.
Home/Pool Leak Detection
Pool leak detection in Hermanus should start by proving there is a leak at all. On this coast a windy fortnight can take as much out of a pool as a genuine fault, and the test that separates them is free.
Tell us how much it drops and over how long, and whether the pump being on makes any difference. Those two answers already halve the search.
Five of them are plumbing and testable. One of them is the shell, and it is much rarer than the quotes suggest.
Dye tracing at cracks, joints and around fittings to establish whether the shell is actually the loss or merely the suspect.
The two most common findings by a distance. Both are testable in an hour and both are repairable without draining.
Each line isolated and held under pressure separately, which tells you which side of the circuit is losing.
The run between pool and pump room, under paving and planting, traced acoustically rather than dug up hopefully.
Multiport valves, unions and pump seals. Water lost here often runs to a drain and is never seen at all.
The bucket comparison, the tests run and the finding, so a pool specialist or an insurer can act on it directly.
Almost every pool leak call starts the same way: the level has dropped, the owner has topped it up two or three times, and they have concluded something is broken. Often something is. Just as often the pool is doing exactly what an open body of water on an exposed coast does in summer, and the money spent finding out would have bought a season of top-ups.
Evaporation is not driven by heat alone. It is driven by the difference between the water surface and the air above it, and above all by air movement across that surface. A windy fortnight will take more out of a pool than a still, hot one. That is worth knowing on a coastline where the wind is the defining feature of the summer, and it is why a pool in Vermont or Onrus with nothing at all wrong with it can lose a noticeable amount in a week and then lose almost nothing the following week.
The test that separates the two costs nothing and takes two days. Fill a bucket and stand it on the top step of the shallow end so the water inside sits at the same level as the pool outside it. Mark both levels. Leave the pool running exactly as it normally does. After two days, compare. Air removes water from both surfaces at an identical rate, so two equal drops mean nothing is escaping through the structure. Where the pool line has fallen below the bucket line, the gap between those two marks is the loss, expressed as a rate you can hand to somebody rather than a suspicion.
That measured rate is the useful part. It tells us roughly what size of defect to look for, and running the test twice, once with the pump on and once with it off, splits the search before anybody arrives. A pool that loses faster with the pump running points at the pressurised return side. Faster with it off points at the suction side. The same either way points at the shell, the skimmer throat or the light niche.
There is a second reason to bother, beyond the invoice. Overstrand has imposed water restrictions before, and in September 2023 stationed tankers and JoJo containers across Greater Hermanus including Sandbaai, Mount Pleasant and Vermont. Run the bucket test before you call anybody, and run it twice, once with the pump on and once with it off. Two days of doing nothing will tell you more than the first hour of any investigation.
The first one regularly costs us the job, which is rather the point.
We ask for the bucket test before booking. If it says evaporation, there is nothing to investigate and no invoice.
An empty pool can move in this ground. Every test we run is done with the pool full.
Suction and return isolated one at a time, so the answer is a specific line rather than "somewhere in the pipework".
If the repair belongs to a pool specialist, you get the findings in a form they can work from.
What does pool leak detection cost in Hermanus?
A fixed figure for the investigation, the same as a house leak search, because the work is a search rather than a repair. It covers the bucket comparison, dye testing at the usual suspects, and pressure testing the suction and return lines. The repair is quoted afterwards, once we know whether it is a seal, a fitting or the line under the paving.
How do I rule out evaporation before booking anything?
Float a bucket in the shallow end, filled to the same level as the pool, and mark both levels. Leave it two days with the pump running normally. Air takes water off the bucket and the pool at the same rate. A pool that has fallen below the bucket line is losing water somewhere other than to the sky. Do the test before you book anybody, because on this coast the answer is frequently evaporation.
The pool only loses water when the pump is running. What does that mean?
That points hard at the return line, which is only under pressure when the pump is on. If it loses more with the pump off, look at the suction side. If the rate is the same either way, the loss is more likely to be the shell, the light niche or a skimmer throat.
Can you find a pool leak without emptying it?
Yes, and emptying it is usually the wrong move anyway. A drained pool in this ground can shift or float, which turns a small leak into a structural problem. Dye testing and line pressure testing are both done with the pool full.
Where do pool leaks usually turn out to be?
Ranked by how often each turns out to be the answer: the light niche and the conduit behind it, then the skimmer throat at the shell, then the returns and main drain fittings, and last the buried run out to the plant. Cracks in the shell itself are real but far less common than people assume.
How much water should a pool lose normally?
Some, and more in a windy summer than a still one, because wind drives evaporation as hard as heat does. The bucket test is the only honest way to separate normal from abnormal at a given property, which is why we ask for it before quoting.
Is a leaking pool worth fixing during water restrictions?
It is worth fixing at any time, and more so under restriction. Overstrand has imposed restrictions before, in September 2023, with water tankers stationed across Greater Hermanus. A pool quietly losing water is the one household loss that continues whether anybody is home or not.
Do you repair what you find, or just find it?
Both, for the plumbing side: return and suction lines, skimmer and fitting connections, and the pipework between pool and plant. Structural shell repairs and relining are a pool specialist’s work and we will say so plainly rather than attempt them.
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Tell us roughly how far it drops in a week and whether the pump makes a difference. If you have run the bucket test, that result is the most useful thing you can send.