What can't Youtube help you with? There is a video pretty much of anything that one might need help with. Yesterday, I started thinking about the pool leak our pool has had for the last few years. It bothers me enough that I don't always keep up with the pool as it is an inferior pool, in my eyes, but also I don't want to spend what I know would be more than a $1000 to have someone come and find the leak and dig up my yard and destroy the concrete. The water leaks down to where the pool is 10-12 inches below where it used to be filled to. This messes up the feel. Walking in, instead of standing in 3 and 1/2 feet of water, up around the belly, it is still below around the thighs. The deepest part normally would come up to my shoulders, which feels perfect for me for standing around without the fear that it is so deep that kids could accidentally drown. The deepest part is small as it rises up quickly, so I never worried the boys or their friends would get in trouble and tire of swimming or cramp up or something like that. With the leak, the water is barely nipple high, so to float, I have to bend my knees which feels goofy.
I found a video where the pool technician is using a dye with a syringe to squirt a tiny amount at a time and seeing if the dye is sucked out into a crack. It was cool to see that next to a pump inlet where there was a suspected crack, the dye was going straight to around the edge of the pipe in the video. I had tried dye, but I was using food coloring and just using the bottles and trying to squirt it at the places I suspected. I never noticed it getting sucked away, but I have had my suspicions of where the leak was. Since I noticed the technician basically had what looked like a syringe, I wanted to get something like that. I found an old squirter to feed babies medicine while we were cleaning the kitchen, but it did not work. As soon as I put it in the water, the dye started running out of the container. I was thinking about where to get a syringe and I remembered I had a bunch of used ones from when I was getting testosterone shots (I need to go back, btw). This was what I needed. Very quickly, when squirting a tiny amount right near the pool inlet, I saw the trail of blue disappear into a crack.
Now that I know where to attack, the best way is to break up the concrete, I guess. DD works in construction and very confidently told me he had all the equipment to cut a hole in the concrete. He mentioned a hammer drill, drilling a bunch of holes around where we want to break it, then using a chisel and stuff. I told him cool, I will start with my hammer drill tomorrow (this was Thursday night), he laughed, your battery powered hammer drill is cute, I have a real one, it'll do it quicker. I have no problem when someone offers to do the hard manual labor for me and for free. The plan is to break thru the concrete, if I can't easily repair the inlet jet, I will just cap the line behind under the concrete, patch the hole where it comes into the pool with hardening clay and hopefully get a few more solid years of use from this pool. As Wife said, this pool is nearing twenty years, which is what got me thinking, we'll just give it this last attempt or I am going to get rid of it and install a new concrete pool.
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