Pool leak detection in Los Angeles

Both, and usually in the same visit. Leak detection and leak repair get separated by companies that only own the listening gear, and the result is a report and a second contractor. A fitting, a light conduit, a skimmer throat or a length of accessible pipe is fixed while the pool is already down. What genuinely needs a second visit is a shell crack that wants the water lower, or a line under a deck that has to be cut and re-run. The repair side is set out on the leak repair page.

It leaks faster and shows sooner, because the volume is small and the plumbing runs hot. A jacuzzi that empties overnight while the pool holds level points at the spa side alone: the blower line, a jet fitting or the spillway. Heat is the reason spa leaks cluster at joints — the pipe expands, the joint works, and the crack opens at the temperature it will never show at when cold, so the test has to be run with the heater on.

Checking the pad costs nothing in our service area, and it stays free if you do not go ahead. Underground work — pressure testing, electronic location, excavation — is quoted separately, because the honest figure depends on how many lines must be tested and what has to be opened at the end.

Two bucket tests and a mark on the tile get you most of the way. Faster loss with the pump running points at the returns; faster with it off, at the suction lines or the shell; the same either way is structural. If the level falls, stops dead and holds, the leak is at that depth — just below the light is the niche, at the skimmer mouth is the throat.

Because it is leaking. An inch a day is roughly four times normal Los Angeles evaporation, about 320 gallons a day on a 16×32 ft pool. Check the pad with the pump running and then off before assuming it is underground.

It depends how long it took. At the quarter-inch-a-day rate ordinary here, evaporation alone accounts for nearly two inches a week, so two inches across a week is unremarkable. Two inches in a day is not.

Usually evaporation underestimated on a windy, unshaded pool; splash-out; a backwash valve weeping to waste; an autofill left running during the test; or a pressure-side leak, which a pump-off test cannot show because it only leaks while the pump pushes.

Yes, and there is usually a choice. Once pressure testing identifies the failing line and acoustic location narrows it to a point, the deck is opened as a small patch and that section repaired — or the run is abandoned and rerouted. We agree the approach and the price first.

Autumn stops hiding them. A pool losing half an inch a day to a Los Angeles summer can be losing another quarter through a crack and still look normal in July. Then the nights cool, evaporation falls, and the leak has not changed — the camouflage has. Autumn also brings the summer water bill.

No. Finding it is bucket tests, dye, pressure testing and acoustic listening, and all of that happens with the deck where it is. Concrete gets opened for the repair, not for the diagnosis — and only after the testing has narrowed a line to a point, so what comes up is a patch rather than a trench. Where that patch goes, and what it costs, is agreed before anything is cut.

The free part stays free, and the paid part is agreed before it starts. Checking the pad costs nothing in our service area whatever it shows, and underground testing is quoted first, so nobody runs up a bill hunting. A fair number of calls end with an answer rather than a leak: a hot windy week, an autofill left on through the test, a backwash valve weeping to waste. That is a result too, and it is cheaper than the repair you were bracing for.

Yes, and it usually gets you a better answer. The same number takes texts: send the equipment pad, the tile line with your dated pencil mark, and the two figures from the bucket test — the drop with the pump on and the drop with it off. That is often enough to say whether this is a pad leak or an underground one before anyone drives out, and it decides what gets loaded on the truck.