We also had to call in American leak detection. They used dye drops to find the leak in our light. (This is the most common leak place for a leak.) The dye drops go towards the leak. Sometimes they use a big stethescope type thing and listen for water draining noise. Good luck finding your leak!

if there is water all the way around the perimeter, something serious is going on that needs to be addressed. I know you just had some significant rains too. Pictures of the area(s) you suspect will help. In fact, posting pictures of the pool and the equipment pad can help. How old is the pool? Has there been any changes to the landscape in a 400 yard perimeter such as a new house or anything? Is the coping still solidly attached? Tiles falling off usually means water got behind them and caused the thin set to deteriorate. I am assuming the pump was running when the water level dropped overnight. This is indicative of a failed return line. You may have several issues happening that need to be addressed. Waiting will not make it cheaper. Patching often makes costs for proper repairs go up, adding to the costs associated. A plaster leak is not normally so dramatic in such a short time. Do you have a multiport on your filter? It may be leaking out the backwash line.

I have an issue that this forum might be able to help with. We are having a problem with DE leaking into pool. We have had the pool 20 yrs and are pretty good at fixing stuff. This has happened before but it was because there was a tear in one or more of the filter grids. This time we replaced the one torn grid, checked/cleaned the air bleeder in the tank, checked the manifold elbow where the grids hook up and changed the 'O' rings in the push-pull backwash lever. That all we know to do. The DE leaks into the pool in intervals and not all the time which is really strange. Looking for help on this AND since some DE is leaking into the pool every so often I wonder how much is really being lost? Should I add more every now and then until we figure out whats wrong? We are trying to clear up the pool water after opening so I need to run it as much as I can but of course am not leaving it on all day/night as I usually do to clear it.Its all very distressing. Any help would sure be appreciated. Terri

Thanks everyone for your responses/help. We don't have a pool builder because we were owner-builder up to shotcrete. After that, we used a licensed pool plaster company for the tile, coping, stone, plaster (i.e. all the finish work). The owner of the pool plaster company maintains that an epoxy plug is a good fix for the broken conduit. However, we've had 6 licensed pool contractors out to assess the damage and NONE of them said an epoxy plug is the proper way to fix the leak. ALL of them said that the shelf would need to be completely demo'd and the conduit (to all the lights) replaced. At this point the conduit to only 1 lighted bubbler is clear, at least enough to get the wire through. The other 2 pipes are still completely blocked (and 1 is broken). Another thing ALL the pool contractors told us is replastering just the shelf will not look good. They ALL said it will look like a big patch: The color won't match the rest of the pool and there will be a 12 foot wide, highly noticeable demarcation line where the 2 plasters meet and, since the water depth is only 9 inches deep, there's no way you won't see it. (FYI, we thought about adding a line of tile to try to cover up the demarcation line, but quickly realized that it would be an odd look for the design of our pool and just end up looking like we're covering something up. Plus the plaster color would still look different than the rest of the pool. Only one contractor considered doing that at first, but then thought about how it would look with our pool and said there's no way it would look right/not look out of place.) Since all the contractors said our pool is going to look pretty crappy with such a huge patch (and we want our pool to look right) we've decided to replaster the entire pool and are going to recover as much money as we can from the plaster company's surety bond. We're also going to try to find out if they have general liability insurance since they damaged pipes that were already existing when they began their work. 3 of the pool contractors we talked to told us a couple of interesting things that we were hoping to get clarification on: They said since the area of the shelf is more than 10% of our pool it's more likely that the plaster company's surety bond company would accept a full replaster of the pool as the proper fix rather than just patching/replastering the shelf. Has anyone heard of this? Btw, the pool contractor we've decided to go with put in their estimate (and is going to tell the bond company) that a full replaster is the only way to make the pool look right (i.e. not look like it's been patched). Our pool plaster was supposed to be Stonescapes Midnight Blue (it's written in our contract), but the pool contractors we spoke to said that unless the plaster company handed us a warranty certificate from NPT then we didn't get what we paid for: A true Stonescapes product backed by NPT's warranty. They said it's common for pool companies to say that they're going to install Stonescapes, charge the customer a higher $ amount, but then use a cheaper product (i.e. either not use Stonescapes at all, or buy the stones from NPT but mix it with a cheaper plaster not warranted by NPT). Does this sound right? Any input would be greatly appreciated!