Pool Sense
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Leak detection

Commercial pool leak detection

The autofill is metered and compared against a weather-adjusted expectation for every day. Water loss the weather cannot explain gets flagged before the water bill arrives.

Community pool with a blue mushroom fountain, lounge chairs, and a covered pool house on a summer afternoon

Most leaks are found by the water bill

A commercial pool with an automatic fill hides its leaks well. The level never drops, so no one notices. The first sign is a water bill that is a few hundred dollars higher than last year's, and by then a season's worth of treated water has gone into the ground.

We meter the fill. The controller sees the fill valve open and close, and the platform turns that into gallons added, with a time stamp for each fill. Then it asks a simple question every day: given today's temperature, sun, humidity, wind, and rain, and any backwash we ran, how much water should this pool have needed? It knows the pool's surface area, so it can turn the day's evaporation into gallons.

When the water actually added runs well above that expectation, and keeps running above it, the leak-likelihood reading climbs from low to watching to elevated to high. One hot, windy day does not trigger it. Five days in a row that each needed double the expected water does.

Then we go find it

A high reading gets a diagnostic visit: dye testing at the skimmers, returns, and light niches, pressure testing the plumbing runs, and isolating sections to narrow it down. We quote the diagnostic, then the repair. Most leaks we find are at the skimmer or a fitting and are repaired in a day.

Questions boards and managers ask us

How much water should a pool lose in a day?
In a Georgia summer, roughly a quarter inch a day to evaporation, more on hot, dry, windy days and less when it rains or when the pool is covered. On a 20,000-gallon pool that is about 100 gallons a day. Splash-out and backwash add to it. Loss well above that, day after day, is a leak until proven otherwise.
How does the leak detection work?
Pools with an automatic fill have a valve that opens when the level drops. We meter that valve through the controller, so we know how many gallons went in and when. PoolSense Intelligence compares each day's fill against what evaporation, rain, and any backwash should have required, using the day's actual weather. Loss the weather cannot explain raises a leak-likelihood reading.
What if the pool does not have an automatic fill?
Then the technician logs the level and the fill on each visit, and the same comparison runs on visit-to-visit data. It is coarser but still catches a real leak. Adding an autofill is a modest upgrade we can quote.
Where do commercial pools usually leak?
Skimmer throats and the skimmer-to-shell joint, return fittings, light niches, the main drain sump, and underground plumbing, roughly in that order. Plaster cracks leak less often than people expect. Equipment-pad leaks are the easiest to find and are usually spotted on a routine visit.
Do you find the leak or just tell us there is one?
Both. The platform tells us there is one and about how large it is. Finding it is a diagnostic visit: dye testing, pressure testing the lines, and isolating sections. We quote the diagnostic and then the repair.
What does a leak cost if it is ignored?
Water, chemicals, and heat, every day. A leak of 300 gallons a day is over 100,000 gallons a season, plus the chemicals to treat the makeup water, plus the risk of undermining the deck. How to tell a leak from evaporation.

Related

Leak detection is included for every pool with an automatic fill. See how it applies to your property, and where we work.

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