Losing More Than A Bucket
Run the bucket test for 24 hours. If the pool drops further than the bucket standing in it, the difference is a leak, not the weather.
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Topping the pool up more often than you used to? Pool leak detection in Paarl starts by separating a real leak from a Boland summer's evaporation, then finds it: the skimmer, the light niche, the main drain, a crack in the shell or a buried return line under the paving. We pressure-test before anyone digs, and quote the repair on what we actually find.
Tell us roughly how much water you are losing and how often you top up, and we will phone you back with a clear, upfront price before we start.
Evaporation is slow, steady and takes water off the whole surface. A leak behaves differently, and these are the tells.
Run the bucket test for 24 hours. If the pool drops further than the bucket standing in it, the difference is a leak, not the weather.
A pool that falls and then holds steady is telling you where the leak is. The level usually settles at the skimmer throat, the light or the return.
Losing water only while the pump runs points at the pressure side, the return line and its fittings, rather than the shell.
Bubbles blowing back into the pool, or a pump that keeps losing prime, means the suction line is drawing air in where water is getting out.
Lawn that stays green and spongy next to the pool through a dry Paarl February is usually a buried line quietly emptying into the ground.
An auto-fill valve hides a leak beautifully while quietly putting it on your Drakenstein bill. A jump with no change in usage is worth checking.
Paarl summers are hot, dry and windy, which makes this the hardest place in the year to tell a leak from the weather. An uncovered pool here loses real water to evaporation every single day through January and February, and wind across the surface roughly doubles it. That is why so many people spend a whole season topping up and assuming it is normal, and why the first thing we do is establish how much of the loss the weather can actually account for. Everything above that line is a leak, and it is worth finding: at Paarl's water tariffs, a steady leak refilled by an auto-fill valve is an expensive thing to leave running all summer.
When it is a leak, it is usually not the shell. The single most common culprit we find is the skimmer box, where the plastic throat pulls away from the concrete it is set into and opens a gap right at the waterline. After that come the light niche and its conduit, the main drain, and the buried suction and return lines running out to the pump. The shell does crack, and on older marbelite pools in the clay-heavy ground near the Berg River it cracks more than most, because those soils swell through winter and shrink through summer and the structure moves with them. But we test the pipework first, because that is where the odds are.
The reason that order matters is your paving. A pool surround is usually the nicest hard landscaping on the property, and the wrong way to find a leak is to start lifting it. We isolate and pressure-test the suction and return lines separately to establish which one is losing, then trace that line with acoustic listening gear until we can mark the exact point on the surface. Then, and only then, does anything come up, and only over the one spot. It is the same method we use for leaks inside a house on our leak detection page, applied to a pool.
Our base is in Paarl in Lemoenkloof, so pool leak detection runs right across the valley: Paarl and Mbekweni, Wellington, Windmeul and Klapmuts, the estates from Boschenmeer and Pearl Valley through to Val de Vie, and on to Simondium, Franschhoek and Stellenbosch.
What matters when someone is about to work around a pool you have spent money on.
The leak trace is priced before we start, and the repair quoted separately once we know what it is.
Same-week call-outs through the summer, right across Paarl and the Winelands.
We know what this valley's summer evaporation really looks like, so we do not chase the weather.
The smallest opening we can make, then patched up and tidied before we go.
The questions Paarl pool owners ask us most before we come out.
Do the bucket test. Stand a bucket of pool water on a step so the water inside and outside it start level, mark both levels, switch the auto-fill off and leave it 24 hours. Evaporation takes the same amount from both, so if the pool has dropped further than the bucket, the difference is a leak. In a Paarl summer, losing a few millimetres a day to evaporation is normal. Losing a centimetre or more a day is not. Our step-by-step guide to the bucket test walks through it.
Far more often in the plumbing than in the shell. The usual suspects are the skimmer box, where the throat cracks away from the pool wall, the light niche and its conduit, the main drain, and the buried suction and return lines running to the pump. Cracks in the shell itself do happen, especially in older marbelite pools that have moved on Paarl's clay soils, but we check the fittings and the pipework first because that is where most of them are.
Usually, yes. We pressure-test the suction and return lines separately to establish which line is losing, then trace that line with acoustic listening equipment to find the point where water is escaping. Only then do we mark and open the one spot. The whole reason for testing first is so that nobody lifts a beautiful paved surround guessing where the pipe failed.
Yes, pool leak detection and pool leak repair at Pearl Valley, Val de Vie, Boschenmeer and the surrounding estates is regular work through the summer. Estate pools are usually newer, which means the shell is rarely the problem and the leak is nearly always in a fitting or a buried line under a landscaped surround, exactly the case where pressure-testing first saves the garden.
We do. Once the leak is pinpointed we quote the pool leak repair separately, so you can see what the trace cost and what the fix costs. Skimmer throats, light niches, fittings and buried suction and return lines are all repairs we carry out ourselves. If the finding is structural, a serious crack in an old marbelite shell, we will tell you straight that it is a pool-lining job rather than a plumbing one.
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