Man, It’s Hot Out!

Well the weather has finally changed; looks like summer is finally here. Every year about this time we start to get phone calls from pool owners who are concerned that their pool has a leak and is losing water.
When the weather changes and it’s very hot out, water evaporates much faster than it did in the winter. Did you know that your lawn needs four inches of water per square foot a week to stay green?  Your pool needs half that amount, or two inches per square foot, to replace water that has evaporated.  So, if you find yourself having to add about two inches of water to your pool each week this is from normal evaporation. Naturally if you are swimming a lot and splashing water out you will need more than two inches.
If you think your pool is losing water you can do something called a bucket test. This is where you fill a bucket up with water and set it on the top step in the pool. Mark the water level inside the bucket with a sharpie and mark the pool water level on the outside of the bucket. Wait one week and check and see how much water evaporated out of the bucket, and how much water evaporated out of the pool. If they are similar then you do not have a leak.  If there is a substantial difference between how much water evaporated out of the bucket and how much water evaporated out of the pool then you have a leak in your pool. This is very easy to tell because it will be obvious the pool lost a lot more water than the bucket.
The next step is to do a leak detection on your pool. This is where we plug all the pipes on your pool and pressurize the pipes with air. Then we use sonar to listen for air escaping out of the broken pipe underground. We will also use dye to test the inside shell of the pool for any leaks. Pools by Ben has done thousands of leak detections over our 29 years of being in business.  If the pool is leaking water it is always very obvious. What I mean is even a small crack in the pipe underground will cause the pool to lose six or eight inches in one to two days.  I can almost always tell just from the phone call whether or not the pool is losing water. When the pool owner calls and says they feel like they have to add lots of water to the pool each week this is usually just evaporation. If the pool owner calls and says help I lost six inches in two days, this is a leak.
The average leak detection costs $450.  If the pool has a leak we will find it. Once we find a leak we can give you a cost to have it repaired. If you choose to have us do the repair, we will finish the repair and then re-test the pool to make sure there are no other leaks.
For more information, call 661-263-7503 or visit www.poolsbyben.com.