Playing Hide N Seek with an Above Ground Pool Leak

by Felicia A. Williams

This little cat and mouse game that I’m playing with my vinyl pool liner is getting a bit old. As mentioned in a post quite some time ago I discovered there was a leak in my above ground pool. Every two to three days I had to add water to the pool or else the pool filter would run dry.

Pool Water/Filter Level

My yard is sloped and my pool filter is placed on ground that is higher than the ground on which the pool is sitting. Because I have a skimmer and a main drain, when the pool water dropped a bit too low for the filter to pull the water from the skimmer, I would switch the valve to pull the water from the main drain (I run the filter at night and if I realize before going to bed the water level is nearing the danger point, I switch the valve from skimmer to the main drain).

I thought my main drain trick would buy an additional day before I would have to add water, but I quickly learned that the dropping water level soon fell below the height of the filter and filter had a difficult time pulling the water up high enough to fill the pump. As a result, the pump would run dry. You never want a pool filter pump to run dry. You’ll burn out the motor.

Ancillary Damage from a Leaking Above Ground Pool

Not wanting to make the pool un-swimmable for the kids during the remaining weeks of the summer season, I decided to re-fill the pool every two to three days so the kiddies could swim for the final 3 weeks of an all too short summer (what we won’t do for our kids). Well, the summer is over and now it’s time to get busy finding the pool leak.

I had an idea of where the leak was because water was accumulating on the ground on the outside of the pool in the area of the leak. My first concern about the leaking pool was that I didn’t want to ruin the grass in the area of the leak.

The grass quickly put my fears to rest. I found that the grass loved the pool water. The chlorine didn’t appear to hurt it at all. As a matter of fact, I’m thinking of sprinkling pool water around the entire yard. The area near the leak is plush, green and beautiful. Who knew?

Anyway, enough is enough. Time to get busy finding the source of the above ground pool leak…

About the Author: Felicia Williams is a wife, mother and grandmother who likes to write about a host of topics.

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Last Modified: 24 March 2020