On Saturday night I went to put the night-cover on the swimming pool and noticed the water level was unnaturally low, and there were big wrinkles all across the bottom of the pool. Have you ever had that sudden sinking feeling that all is not well?
It only took a couple of minutes to find the problem – somehow one of the feet of the ladder that are underwater had made a hole in the liner, about 10 centimetres long, and water was escaping at a startling rate.
Those of you with holiday rentals will appreciate that finding out in the middle of July that your pool liner might need replacing is not very amusing. It takes several weeks to order a new liner and get it fitted, and the prospect of ringing lots of people to say their holiday has been ruined hardly made for a calm Sunday.
We rang pretty much everyone we could think of for advice and recommendations, and it turned out a good quality pool installer is based not too far from here.
Of course we called them first thing Monday, and they came around on Tuesday morning. Great news, they could actually repair the leak underwater using a giant sized patch and now, after refilling the pool to its correct level, we are back in action!
Even more important our holidaymakers are back in action…
Advice for anyone with a leak in a pool liner
- It is possible to buy kits that include underwater glue and patches. Sounds easy enough but with big leaks you need to remove water from behind the liner BEFORE mending it. For ours they applied a temporary patch to cover the hole while water was removed from behind the liner, then a larger one afterwards
- Since we are on a hill they managed to set up siphons with hosepipes to get the water from under the liner (several cubic metres, takes a while…) I generously offered them a pump to speed things up a bit but they told me that would almost certainly cause further damage. So don’t try that at home…
- Keep a spare patch and glue close to hand – if our patch starts to leak we have a bigger better one ready to put on top! (we will replace the whole liner when the season is over)
- Bostik 1220 glue is clearly labelled as needing surfaces to be clean, dry and dust free. So you might not guess it works underwater! But it does and is what the swimming pool repairers recommended that we use if we ever feel the need to start mending leaks ourselves. Widely available in DIY type shops.
How did it happen in the first place?
The liner is not old (about three years old with a 10 year guarantee) and is ‘heavy duty’ (i.e. the thicker type of liner). likewise the ladder ‘feet’ are exactly as they should be (designed to rest against a liner)
There were a lot of holdaymakers in the pool the day it happened but normal use shouldn’t cause problems, and never has in the past…
Of course being unsure how it happened means we are now in a constant state of nervous panic in case the same thing happens again, and keep dashing up to the pool every five minutes to check all is well!
This story makes me go cold. We had a hugely expensive liner/ refurb of the pool done 3 years ago and I am forever worrying when we have nephews/ friends children jumping on the ladder, diving off the pool enrouler and knocking out the pool lights etc. Still, it is reassuring to know one doesn’t have to empty the pool if the lining is punctured. I spent hours researching protecting the liner against ladder feet and found a company in the UK that does these plastic add ons that spread the load and rotate to adjust to the angle of contact, but can no longer find them on the web.
I have a slightly broken (as in one section of grill has broken) base water inlet cover – ie it feeds the pump/watercleaning system together with the two skimmers, probably caused by old age (pool is 10 years old now) and someone (#1 son!) jumping in and hitting it hard with his feet. For now it remains as it is because I have no idea if it is replacable without draining the pool, and I recall being told I shouldnt drain the pool anyway!!
It’s harder than you might think repairing things underwater – you need someone to hold you down!
We have also always been told a pool shouldn’t be emptied, but of course when a liner is replaced it gets emptied for at least a few days so I guess it isn’t usually a problem – but don’t take that as my personal assurance!