Five signs your pool has a leak

Start with the bucket test

Stand a bucket of pool water on the top step, mark both water levels and wait 48 hours. If the pool has dropped noticeably more than the bucket, you are losing water somewhere other than the surface.

The other four signs

Persistently soft or unusually green ground on one side of the pool, air bubbling from the returns when the pump is running, cracked or lifting grout along a single line, and a chlorine bill that keeps climbing while the readings stay low.

What happens next

We pressure test each circuit separately, dye test the shell and use acoustic listening on the buried runs. Nine times out of ten the leak is at a fitting rather than in the shell, which means a small repair rather than excavation.