Orbit Houston Pool Leak Detection

Pool Skimmer Replacement in Dickinson, TX – Before & After

Orbit — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 03:08:26 +0000

Pool Skimmer Replacement in Dickinson, TX – Before & After

When a pool falls to the bottom of the skimmer mouth and then stops, the pool is telling you where the leak is. Water only escapes while there is water above the opening, so a level that settles at one height and holds is pointing at whatever sits at that height. On this Dickinson pool that was the skimmer, and the body itself had failed rather than the plumbing behind it.

Why skimmers crack in this part of the coast

A skimmer is a plastic box cast into a concrete shell. The two materials do not move together: plastic expands and contracts far more with temperature than gunite does, and the joint between them works a little every hot day and every cool night. Along the bay, two local factors shorten that clock. The water table sits high, so the ground around the shell stays saturated for long stretches and moves with it. And the fill packed around a skimmer during construction is looser than undisturbed soil, so it settles more. Twenty or thirty years of that and the box either separates from the shell at its collar or cracks through its own floor.

Proving it before replacing anything

A skimmer is not a cheap part to replace, so we do not replace one on suspicion. Two tests settle it. Dye testing around the throat and collar shows whether water is being drawn into a joint. Then the suction line is isolated and put under pressure, which pushes air back through any opening in the body itself. That second test is what the before photograph shows.

Before & After Result

In the before photograph the old skimmer is stained yellow brown after decades of service, and air forced through during the pressure test is bubbling up through the floor of the box. The crack it is coming through was not visible dry. Under test it announced itself. Once a skimmer body has failed like that, patching is a short term answer at best — the plastic is old, brittle and already moving against the shell. We removed it. The after photograph shows the replacement in place: a new body set into the shell, sealed properly around the throat, and the surround made good. The suction line was tested again before the surface was closed up, and the pool now holds its level rather than stopping at the skimmer. The replacement is covered by our 2-year warranty.

Skimmer Repair & Replacement in Dickinson & Nearby Communities

We find and repair skimmer leaks throughout Dickinson, League City, Texas City, La Marque, Santa Fe, Kemah and the Galveston County side of our service area. If your pool always stops at the same level and then holds, that is the most useful thing you can tell us on the phone. Call (346) 850-9775 or schedule online.

Schedule Your Leak Detection Today

The leaks won’t fix themselves. Prevent high bills and long-term damage.

Plan long-term solutions with an in-depth assessment.

Schedule & Pay

Pool Skimmer Replacement in Dickinson, TX – Before & After yazısı ilk önce Orbit Houston Pool Leak Detection üzerinde ortaya çıktı.

Pool Cleaner Line Leak Repair in Rosenberg, TX – Before & After

Orbit — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 03:08:21 +0000

Pool Cleaner Line Leak Repair in Rosenberg, TX – Before & After

Pressure side cleaner lines — the dedicated line that drives a Polaris or similar cleaner — are the leak nobody suspects. The cleaner still works. The pump sounds normal. The pool just quietly goes down, and everybody looks at the skimmer and the returns first. On this Rosenberg job the cleaner line was the only line that would not hold pressure, and the trench it came out of explains why locating it mattered so much.

What a cleaner line leak looks like from the house

This line runs at pump pressure whenever the cleaner circuit is on, so a crack in it behaves like a small hose pointed into the soil. The tells are subtle:

The pool drops faster on days the cleaner runs than on days it does not
The cleaner moves more slowly or stalls in one part of the pool
A patch of lawn or bed near the run stays green through a dry spell
Everything else — skimmer, returns, main drain — tests clean

Because the cleaner circuit can be switched off independently, it is also one of the easiest suspects to confirm. Run the pool for two days without the cleaner and compare the drop.

What We Did on This Rosenberg Project

Pressure testing at the equipment pad singled out the cleaner line. Listening along its run placed the failure in a stretch where the line passes close to the pool shell, and that is where we opened the ground. What came out of that hole is worth looking at. The cleaner line is not alone down there — it lies in a bundle with four other pool lines, all within a few inches of each other, all installed in the same trench when the pool was built. The repair therefore had to be surgical:

Hand digging the last of the excavation to avoid striking the neighbouring lines
Cutting out only the failed section of the cleaner line
Splicing in new schedule 40 pipe with proper couplings
Re-pressure-testing the repaired line before backfilling
Bedding the bundle in clean fill so no pipe rests against rubble

Before & After Result

In the before photograph the cleaner line has been cut open in the trench, lying alongside the other four lines. Notice the rust coloured blooms spreading across the pipes around it — that staining is iron in the soil following water out of a joint over a long period, and it is one of the signs we read when deciding exactly where to cut. The after photograph is the same trench with a new elbow and a fresh section of pipe bridging the gap. The four neighbouring lines were never disturbed, which matters: every pipe you handle in a twenty year old bundle is a pipe you might have to repair next. The line was tested again at pressure before the trench was closed, and the work is covered by our 2-year warranty.

Pool Cleaner Line Repair in Rosenberg & Nearby Communities

We repair pressure side cleaner lines, return lines and suction lines across Rosenberg, Richmond, Fulshear, Needville, Sugar Land and the wider Fort Bend area. If your pool loses more water on the days the cleaner runs, tell us — that single observation takes most of the plumbing off the list. Call (346) 850-9775 or schedule online.

Schedule Your Leak Detection Today

The leaks won’t fix themselves. Prevent high bills and long-term damage.

Plan long-term solutions with an in-depth assessment.

Schedule & Pay

Pool Cleaner Line Leak Repair in Rosenberg, TX – Before & After yazısı ilk önce Orbit Houston Pool Leak Detection üzerinde ortaya çıktı.

Pool Return Line Leak Under a Concrete Deck in Stafford, TX – Before & After

Orbit — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 03:08:15 +0000

Pool Return Line Leak Under a Concrete Deck in Stafford, TX – Before & After

This Stafford pool was losing close to an inch a day and the deck told us nothing. No wet spot, no sinking slab, no sound outside. The loss climbed when the pump ran, which put the pressure side of the plumbing at the top of the list — but that still left several lines and a whole patio to choose from. The photograph on the left is the moment the guesswork ended. That is the leak, caught while the line was under test.

Why the deck had to be opened at all

Pool lines in this part of Fort Bend County are trenched in before the deck is poured, so they end up running underneath it. When a joint fails twenty years later, the failure is under four inches of concrete rather than out in the yard. We do not open concrete to look. We open it once, in one place, after the line has been isolated and the leak has been located to within about a foot.

Finding it: isolate, pressurise, listen

Each line was closed off at the equipment pad and tested on its own. Most held their pressure. One bled down steadily, which named the line but not the spot. From there it is a matter of following the run and listening. Air escaping from a pressurised pipe underground makes a sound you can track with electronic equipment, and the signal peaks over the failure. The steps on this job:

Isolating every line at the pad and pressure testing them separately
Identifying the return line as the one losing pressure
Listening along the run to place the leak beneath the deck
Marking a single cut area rather than a trench line
Saw cutting the slab so the patch would have clean square shoulders

Before & After Result

The before photograph shows the opened hole with the line still under test. Water and air are pushing up around the pipe and foaming at the surface — that turbulence is the leak, sitting exactly where the listening equipment said it would be. There is no interpretation needed at that point. The after photograph is the same deck once the pipe had been repaired, tested again and the concrete closed back up. One round patch, roughly the size of a dinner plate, sitting across a control joint. The rest of the patio was never touched. New concrete cures lighter than twenty year old concrete and will darken over the coming months as it weathers. Every connection was pressure tested before it was buried, and the repair carries our 2-year warranty.

Pool Leak Repair in Stafford & Nearby Communities

We find and repair underground pool plumbing leaks throughout Stafford, Missouri City, Sugar Land, Meadows Place, Richmond and the surrounding southwest Houston area. If your pool loses more water while the pump is running, that pattern is worth telling us about — it narrows the search before we arrive. Call (346) 850-9775 or schedule online, and we will find it before we open anything.

Schedule Your Leak Detection Today

The leaks won’t fix themselves. Prevent high bills and long-term damage.

Plan long-term solutions with an in-depth assessment.

Schedule & Pay

Pool Return Line Leak Under a Concrete Deck in Stafford, TX – Before & After yazısı ilk önce Orbit Houston Pool Leak Detection üzerinde ortaya çıktı.

The Joint Fails Before the Pipe Does

Orbit — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 02:22:31 +0000

The Joint Fails Before the Pipe Does

In twenty years of opening ground around Houston pools, we have cut out very few lengths of pipe that failed in the middle. PVC is tough. Buried, out of sunlight, carrying water at low pressure, a straight run of schedule 40 will outlast most of the house.

What fails is the places where the pipe stops being a straight run: the glued joints, the fittings, and the transitions between one kind of pipe and another. If you understand why, you can usually predict where an old Pasadena pool is going to leak.

Flexible pipe glued into rigid fittings

A lot of pools built here from the 1980s onwards used flexible corrugated pipe for the awkward runs — around tight curves, up to spa jets, out to a cleaner line. It is quick to install and it bends where rigid pipe would need three fittings.

The trouble is at the ends, where the flex has to be glued into a rigid PVC fitting.

Flexible pipe glued into a rigid tee, uncovered in wet clay. The staining around the socket is the giveaway.

Two different materials, two different stiffnesses, one joint holding them together. The rigid fitting does not move. The flex pipe does — every time the ground swells and shrinks, every time the pump starts and the line pressurises. All of that movement concentrates at the glue line.

The staining you can see around that socket is the tell. Iron in the soil follows the water out of a weeping joint and leaves a rust coloured halo behind. When we open ground and find that pattern around a fitting, we have almost always found the leak.

Where the ground stops moving and the concrete starts

The second reliable failure point is anywhere a buried pipe passes under the edge of a slab.

The crack sits exactly where the pipe leaves open soil and goes under the concrete — the point where the ground can move and the pipe cannot.

On one side of that line is soil that rises and falls with the seasons. On the other is a concrete deck that does not. The pipe has to cross the boundary, and the bending all happens in the few inches at the edge.

Pasadena’s soil makes this worse than most. Heavy clay through a dry summer shrinks and pulls away; the first serious rain swells it back. A pipe pinned under concrete at one end and sitting in that clay at the other gets worked back and forth every year until something gives, and it gives right at the line where the concrete starts.

Same story at the pool shell itself, where a line comes out of the gunite. The shell does not move. The soil does.

What this means for finding it

It means we do not search a pipe run evenly. We start at the places where the design says stress collects: fittings, transitions, the deck edge, the shell penetration, the equipment pad. Nine times out of ten it is at one of them, which is why a located leak usually needs one small opening rather than a trench.

Pressure testing tells us which line. Listening along the run tells us roughly where. Knowing where joints fail tells us where to look hardest when the first two narrow it to a few feet.

How the repair is made

The failed section comes out completely. We do not patch a cracked fitting or wrap a weeping joint, because both are temporary and both mean opening the same hole again.

New rigid pipe spliced in. The offset is deliberate — it steps the line around the failed section without straining either end.

New rigid pipe goes back in, in schedule 40 rather than flex, and the geometry is built with fittings instead of by bending anything. The offset in that photo steps the new run around the old failure without putting any strain on the ends it connects to.

Then it is pressure tested before it is buried, and bedded in clean fill rather than dropped back into rubble. Sharp rock against PVC is a slow leak waiting to happen.

Can you predict your own pool?

Roughly, yes. If your pool is over twenty years old, has flexible pipe, and sits on the clay that most of this side of Houston sits on, the joints are the part with a service life. That is not a reason to replumb a pool that is working. It is a reason to take a small, steady water loss seriously rather than topping it up for another season.

We cover Pasadena, Deer Park and the east side for line repair and leak detection. Call (346) 850-9775.

Common Questions

Why do pool pipes leak at the joints rather than in the middle?

Because the joints are where movement concentrates. A straight buried pipe is barely stressed, but a glued socket joining two parts of different stiffness takes all the flexing when the ground moves or the line pressurises.

Is flexible pool pipe bad?

It is not defective, but it has a shorter service life than rigid PVC and it fails at its glued ends. When we replace a failed section we go back in with rigid schedule 40 and build the bends with fittings.

Why does clay soil cause pool leaks in Houston?

Because it changes volume with moisture. It shrinks away in a dry summer and swells with rain, so anything buried in it is pushed and pulled every year. Pool pipes are anchored at both ends — to the shell and to the equipment — so that movement has to go somewhere.

The Joint Fails Before the Pipe Does yazısı ilk önce Orbit Houston Pool Leak Detection üzerinde ortaya çıktı.

Draining a Pool to Repair Cracks: When It Is Necessary and What It Involves

Orbit — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 02:22:28 +0000

Draining a Pool to Repair Cracks: When It Is Necessary and What It Involves

We avoid draining pools. Not because it is difficult, but because an empty pool is a pool at risk, and most leaks can be found and fixed without ever taking the water out.

But some cannot. When a gunite shell has cracked structurally, the repair has to be made dry, and the pool has to come down. This is what that job actually looks like, and why we take it seriously rather than treating it as a routine step.

Why an empty pool is a risk

A pool shell is designed to have water in it. The weight of that water is what holds it down against the ground it sits in.

Take the water out and the balance changes. If the water table is high — and around Montgomery and Lake Conroe, after a wet week, it often is — groundwater pressure under the shell can lift it. A floated pool is not a repair job any more; it is a replacement. That is why we check conditions and the forecast before draining anything, and why we do not drain a pool and leave it standing empty over a weekend if we can help it.

Plaster is the second reason. A surface that has spent years underwater does not enjoy being dried out in Texas sun. Old plaster can craze and check when it dries, and a pool that is drained for a week in July often needs more surface work afterwards than the crack repair itself.

What a structural crack looks like once the water is gone

Underwater, most cracks look like a hairline pencil mark. Drained, they show their real shape.

The same cracks after chasing. Following the crack is what shows you how far it really runs.

That is a raised wall on a drained pool with the cracks already chased out. The pattern is worth reading: a vertical run coming down from the tile line, then a long horizontal branch, then shorter legs splitting off it. That is a wall that has been pushed, not a surface that has simply shrunk.

Cosmetic crazing in plaster is a fine web of shallow lines that goes nowhere. Structural cracking has direction and continues through the material. Telling them apart is most of the diagnosis, and it is the difference between a surface repair and a job like this one.

Chasing the crack out

You cannot fill a hairline crack. There is nothing for the material to hold on to, and anything you smear over the top will fail within a season.

So the crack is opened up — chased into a clean groove with square shoulders, cut back until the edges are sound gunite rather than loose or delaminated material.

Close up of a chased crack. The groove is cut back to solid material on both sides so the repair has something to bond to.

It looks worse at this stage than it did before we started, and customers say so. It is meant to. The groove is what gives the repair a mechanical key and a real bonding surface on both faces instead of a feathered edge over a void.

Where the crack runs through the shell rather than just the surface, the repair also needs to deal with the movement that caused it. Filling a moving crack with something rigid gets you the same crack back, usually within a year and usually half an inch to one side.

Filling and finishing

The groove is cleaned out, dampened, and filled in layers with a bonding material chosen to suit the joint rather than whatever is in the truck. It is worked in rather than laid on top, and finished flush.

The same wall filled. The repair lines are visible against the weathered surface and will disappear under new plaster.

Filled, the crack lines are still visible against the old surface, as you can see above. That is expected. A structural repair is not a cosmetic one, and the finish comes afterwards — either a patch and blend, or new plaster if the pool was due for it anyway.

Honestly, if a pool needs its shell cracks repaired and its surface is already fifteen years old, doing both at once is the better value. The pool is drained once instead of twice.

What we do first, before anyone talks about draining

Before draining a pool for crack repair, we want to know two things. Is the crack actually where the water is going — because a visible crack and an active leak are not automatically the same thing. And are the lines sound, because there is no sense draining a pool for the shell while a return line is also leaking.

That means a dye test on the crack and a pressure test on every line first. It is a short visit and it occasionally saves the whole job.

We do structural crack repair around Montgomery, Conroe and the lake. Call (346) 850-9775.

Common Questions

Do you have to drain a pool to fix a crack?

For a structural crack through the shell, yes — the repair has to be made and cured dry. Many other leaks, including plumbing leaks and some joint and fitting leaks, are found and repaired with the pool full.

Is it dangerous to drain a swimming pool?

It carries real risk. With a high water table the empty shell can be pushed up out of the ground, and old plaster can craze as it dries in the sun. We check ground conditions and weather first and keep the pool empty for as little time as possible.

Why does the crack look bigger after you start?

Because it has been chased out on purpose. A hairline crack gives a repair nothing to bond to, so it is cut back into a clean groove with sound material on both sides. The opened groove is what makes the repair last.

Draining a Pool to Repair Cracks: When It Is Necessary and What It Involves yazısı ilk önce Orbit Houston Pool Leak Detection üzerinde ortaya çıktı.

When a Pool Line Cannot Be Repaired, We Route Around It

Orbit — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 02:22:26 +0000

When a Pool Line Cannot Be Repaired, We Route Around It

Most leaking pipes get cut out and spliced. Dig down, remove the bad section, glue in new pipe, test, backfill. That is the normal job and it is what we do most days.

Then there are the lines you cannot reach. The pipe that runs under a boulder the size of a car. The waterfall feed buried inside a rock grotto that was built on top of it. The line that disappears under a structure nobody is going to take apart for a pool repair. For those, the right answer is not a better excavation. It is a new pipe on a new path.

How we decide

Rerouting is not a shortcut and we do not reach for it first. Three things push a job in that direction:

The leak is under something immovable — structural rock work, a retaining wall, a slab that carries something else
The pipe has failed more than once — a third repair on the same run is money spent on a pipe that has told you what it thinks
Access would cost more than the pipe — when taking the rock apart costs several times what new plumbing costs

The first one is the most common on Fulshear pools, because the big naturalistic rock features that suit these backyards are also the hardest thing to plumb underneath.

The old waterfall feed could not be reached. A new line was run up behind the rocks instead and tied in above.

On that job the waterfall line was leaking somewhere under the boulder wall. Getting to it would have meant dismantling and rebuilding the feature. Instead the old line was abandoned in place, capped at both ends, and a new pipe was brought up behind the rocks where it is out of sight and, more usefully, where it can be reached again.

Abandoning a pipe properly

Leaving a dead pipe in the ground sounds careless. Done properly it is not, and it is far less disruptive than pulling it out.

The rule is that both ends have to be sealed. An open abandoned line is a drain: groundwater runs into it, it fills with silt, and if it is still connected to anything at one end it can quietly move water for years. We cap it, and we record where it is so that the next person to work on the pool does not spend an afternoon pressure testing a pipe that has not been in service since 2019.

Building the new run so it can be serviced

The point of a reroute is not just to stop today’s leak. It is to leave the system in a state where the next problem is easy.

The new manifold, built behind the coping where it can be reached. Each leg is labelled in marker before it is buried.

Three things we insist on in a new run. It goes where somebody can get to it again. Every leg is labelled before it is covered, because a marker pen costs nothing and a mystery pipe costs an hour. And wherever it makes sense, it gets a valve.

An isolation valve on the water feature line. If this feature ever leaks again it can be shut off on its own.

That ball valve is the cheapest part of the whole job and probably the most useful. With it in place, a future leak on the water feature can be isolated in seconds — the feature goes out of service, the rest of the pool keeps running normally, and nobody is losing water while they wait for an appointment.

Most older pools were built without them. Adding one while the ground is already open costs almost nothing.

What a reroute costs compared with a repair

More than a single splice, less than repeated ones. A straightforward dig and splice is the cheapest thing we do. A reroute means more pipe, more trench and more time, so it lands higher.

The comparison that actually matters is not reroute against one repair. It is reroute against the third repair on the same tired line, plus the water lost between each of them, plus opening the same ground three times. When we recommend rerouting it is because that arithmetic has stopped being close.

If your water feature is the suspect

Water features are worth testing separately, because they are the one part of the system that can be switched off and left off. If your loss slows down or stops when the feature is not running, you have already narrowed it to that line and told us a great deal before we arrive.

We handle water feature leak detection and repair and full pool repair across Fulshear, Katy and west Houston. Call (346) 850-9775.

Common Questions

Is it bad to leave an old pool pipe in the ground?

Not if it is capped at both ends and its position is recorded. An abandoned line that has been sealed properly is inert. One left open is a different matter, because it fills with silt and groundwater and can move water for years.

Is rerouting more expensive than repairing the pipe?

More than one straightforward splice, yes. Less than repairing the same failing line repeatedly, or than taking apart rock work to reach it. We recommend it when the access cost or the failure history makes a normal repair the more expensive route.

Can you shut off just my waterfall if it leaks?

Only if there is a valve on that line, which many older pools do not have. Adding one during a repair is inexpensive while the ground is open, and it means a future problem on that feature can be isolated without shutting down the pool.

When a Pool Line Cannot Be Repaired, We Route Around It yazısı ilk önce Orbit Houston Pool Leak Detection üzerinde ortaya çıktı.

What a Dye Test Actually Proves — and What It Cannot

Orbit — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 02:22:24 +0000

What a Dye Test Actually Proves — and What It Cannot

Of everything we do on a leak detection call, the dye test is the part that looks the least technical. There is no meter, no gauge, no screen. Somebody gets in the water with a small bottle and squeezes a thread of colour next to a crack.

It is also the only test that shows you the leak with your own eyes rather than inferring it. When it works, there is no argument left to have.

The principle is just water moving

Water leaving the pool through a crack has to move to get there. Release a dye with the same density as pool water right beside a suspected opening, hold still, and the dye either sits there in a cloud or gets drawn in.

Everything about the method is aimed at removing the things that could move that dye for any other reason. That is why we ask for the pump to be off for a while before we get in, why we wait for the surface to go still, and why we work slowly. A dye test done in a hurry, next to a running return, proves nothing at all.

Dye pulled into a crack at the front throat of a skimmer. The thread does not drift — it goes in and disappears.

That is a real find on a Deer Park pool. The skimmer throat is where the plastic skimmer body meets the gunite shell, and it is the single most common structural leak we find in this area. The two materials expand at different rates, the joint between them opens over the years, and once it opens the pool drains until the level reaches the bottom of the skimmer mouth and then stops.

If your pool always settles at the same height and then holds, look at the skimmer before you look anywhere else.

What the dye is really telling you

A positive dye test proves three things at once, which is why we lean on it so heavily:

There is an opening here, not just a cosmetic mark on the surface
It goes somewhere — the water is leaving the shell, not sitting in a void
It is active right now, at this water level, under these conditions

That last point matters more than it sounds. Cracks in a pool shell open and close with temperature and ground movement. A crack that leaks in February can seal itself in August. Testing tells you what the pool is doing today.

What it cannot do

A dye test only works where a person can reach and hold still, in water clear enough to see through. It tells you nothing about the plumbing, because a buried pipe leaking six feet down does not pull water from the pool surface in any way you could see.

It also finds one leak at a time. Pools frequently have more than one, and finding the obvious crack in the skimmer does not mean the return line is fine. That is why a dye test is one part of a detection visit rather than the whole of it, and why we still pressure test the lines even after we have found something structural.

A corner where the grout has gone. The opening behind the tile is the path, and the dye shows it is open all the way through.

The second photo shows the other family of structural leaks we chase in older Deer Park pools: the joints. Missing grout at a tile corner, a gap where the tile band meets the coping, an open joint at a step. None of them look dramatic. All of them can move a lot of water in a week.

Why we do not just seal everything we see

It is tempting to put sealant into every open joint in a pool. We do not, and the reason is that filling a joint that is not leaking hides it from the next person and wastes the visit.

More importantly, an open joint is often a symptom. If the grout is missing along a whole run of tile, or a corner has separated, something has moved — and finding out what moved is more useful than filling the gap it left. Houston clay shrinks in drought and swells in rain, and a pool sitting on it gets pulled in both directions every year.

Getting the most out of the visit

Before we arrive, stop topping the pool up and let it find its own level. A pool that has been refilled every morning tells us nothing, because the level never settles anywhere. If it stops at the skimmer mouth, at the light, or at a step, that resting level is a strong clue about where to test first.

Turn off the autofill for the same reason. It is the single most common thing that hides a leak from both of us.

We run leak detection and structural crack repair in Deer Park, La Porte and along the ship channel. Call (346) 850-9775.

Common Questions

Does a dye test work in a cloudy pool?

Not well. You have to be able to see a thin thread of colour a few inches away and watch whether it moves. If the water is green or milky we will usually ask for it to be cleared first, or fall back on pressure testing and electronic listening.

Why does my pool stop losing water at a certain level?

Because the leak is at that height. Water only escapes while there is water above the opening. A pool that settles at the bottom of the skimmer mouth and then holds is pointing straight at the skimmer.

Can I do a dye test myself?

You can try, and it sometimes works on an obvious crack. Turn the pump off, wait for the water to be completely still, and use food colouring close to the surface you are testing. The usual difficulty is that any movement in the water moves the dye, so it is easy to convince yourself of a leak that is not there.

What a Dye Test Actually Proves — and What It Cannot yazısı ilk önce Orbit Houston Pool Leak Detection üzerinde ortaya çıktı.

Not Every Pool Leak Is Underground: The Valves at Your Equipment Pad

Orbit — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 02:22:22 +0000

Not Every Pool Leak Is Underground: The Valves at Your Equipment Pad

Some of the calls we take are not really leaks at all. The pool loses water, or the spa empties overnight, or the waterfall runs when nobody switched it on — and the cause is sitting in plain sight at the equipment pad, about waist height, with a handle on top.

Valves wear out. They are the only part of a pool’s plumbing with moving parts and rubber seals, and after ten or fifteen Houston summers those seals stop sealing. The good news is that this is the cheapest category of leak there is to fix.

The diverter valve: how a spa empties into the pool

A three port diverter valve sends water either to the pool, or to the spa, or splits it between the two. Inside is a plate with a rubber seal around its edge, and turning the handle swings that plate across the ports.

When the seal hardens, tears, or wears a groove into the plate, the valve stops closing properly. Water finds its way past and travels where it should not. On a raised spa the effect is obvious: the spa drains down into the pool overnight, and the pool level rises rather than falls.

A diverter lifted out of its body. The seal has gone hard and wavy and the plate face is scored — it cannot close against the port any more.

That is a diverter we pulled from a Tomball pad. Note the labels on the pipes below it, spa return on one side and the waterfall on the other. A valve in that condition lets water cross between them whenever the pump runs.

The important thing about this failure is that you are not losing water at all. Nothing is leaving the system. It is only moving between two bodies of water that are meant to stay separate, which is why measuring the drop with a bucket test gives such a confusing answer.

Check valves: why the pump loses prime

A check valve does one job. It lets water go one way and stops it coming back. There is usually one on the suction side before the pump, and often one on the line to a water feature or a cleaner.

Inside is a rubber flapper on a hinge, sometimes with a spring behind it. It opens under flow and falls closed when the pump stops.

Three check valves opened up on the same job. Hardened flappers, tired springs, and one that had algae growing across the seat.

When the flapper hardens, or the spring loses its tension, or debris props it open, water runs backwards the moment the pump shuts off. The symptoms are familiar to anyone who has one:

The pump basket is empty in the morning and the pump has to be primed by hand
Air bubbles come out of the returns for the first few minutes of every cycle
A raised water feature drains back down through its line overnight
The pump runs noisy and hot because it is moving air rather than water

None of that is a leak either, but all of it looks like one from the house, and running a pump dry will cost you a seal or an impeller before long.

How we tell a valve problem from a pipe problem

This is one of the easier calls to settle on site, and it usually takes ten minutes rather than a full leak detection.

We isolate the valve, run the system, and watch what happens on each side of it. A valve that is passing water when it should be closed gives itself away immediately. We also pressure test the lines around it, because a valve that looks tired can occasionally be innocent and the actual failure is a foot further along the pipe.

If it is the valve, the fix is a rebuild kit or a replacement. Either way it is the same afternoon, no digging, and no deck work.

A replacement check valve in place. The clear lid is deliberate — you can see the flapper working without taking anything apart.

We fit clear lid valves wherever we can. Being able to look through the top and see whether the flapper is sitting closed saves a service call the next time something behaves oddly.

How long valves are supposed to last

A diverter seal in Houston sun and chlorine has a realistic life of somewhere between eight and fifteen years. Check valve flappers are similar. Neither is a part that fails suddenly — they degrade, and the symptoms creep in over a season.

If your equipment was installed with the pool and the pool is over ten years old, and something has started behaving strangely, the valves are worth looking at before anybody talks about excavating.

When to call

Call if the spa empties overnight, if the pump needs priming most mornings, if a water feature runs without being asked, or if you see air in the returns. Any of those is worth a look at the pad first.

We handle equipment and valve repair throughout Tomball, Magnolia and the northwest side. Call (346) 850-9775.

Common Questions

Why does my spa drain into the pool overnight?

Most often a worn diverter valve seal at the equipment pad. When the seal hardens it stops closing against the port and water crosses from the spa side to the pool side under gravity. A cracked spillover is the other common cause, so both get checked.

Why does my pool pump lose prime every morning?

Usually a failed check valve on the suction side. When its flapper stops sealing, water drains back toward the pool while the pump is off and the pump wakes up full of air. It is a common failure after ten or so years.

Is a leaking valve expensive to fix?

It is at the cheap end of pool repair. There is no excavation, no deck work and no plaster, and most valve repairs are finished in a single visit. Diagnosing it correctly is what saves you money, because these symptoms are easy to mistake for an underground leak.

Not Every Pool Leak Is Underground: The Valves at Your Equipment Pad yazısı ilk önce Orbit Houston Pool Leak Detection üzerinde ortaya çıktı.

Will We Have to Break Up Your Deck to Fix the Leak?

Orbit — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 02:22:19 +0000

Will We Have to Break Up Your Deck to Fix the Leak?

This is the question we get asked before almost anything else, and usually before the customer asks what it costs. It is a fair worry. Most people picture a jackhammer, a pile of broken concrete, and a patch that never matches.

The honest answer is that the deck sometimes has to be opened. What we can promise is how much of it — and on a properly located leak, the answer is normally a hole you could cover with a dinner plate.

Why the pipes end up under the concrete in the first place

When a Richmond pool is built, the plumbing is trenched in first and the deck is poured over it afterwards. The lines fan out from the equipment pad and run around the shell, and the shortest path is almost always straight under where the deck will be.

That is not bad workmanship. It is simply how a pool is built. It does mean that when a joint fails twenty years later, the failure is under four inches of concrete rather than out in the lawn.

One opening in the deck, cut only after the leak was located — the repaired line is second from the left.

Look at the photo above and you can see the second reason we do not guess. That is not one pipe down there. It is five or six of them lying side by side, a few inches apart, all heading in the same direction. Open the wrong spot and you have broken your deck for nothing, and you still have to open it again somewhere else.

What decides the size of the hole

The size of the opening is set entirely by how well we located the leak beforehand, not by how careful we are with the saw.

Located to within a foot — a hole around eighteen inches across, enough to get two hands and a saw in
Located to a general area — a longer trench, opened progressively until the wet spot appears
Not located at all — exploratory digging, which is where the horror stories come from

That is why we do not skip pressure testing. Isolating each line and listening along its run is what turns a whole patio into one opening.

Cutting, repairing and closing back up

Once the spot is marked, the concrete is cut rather than broken. A cut edge gives a clean square shoulder for the patch to key into, and it stops cracks running out into the rest of the slab the way a hammer does.

Under the slab the bad section is cut out and new pipe is glued in. In the photo those are two new two inch elbows carrying the line around the failure. The repair is pressure tested again before anything is buried, because nobody wants to close a deck twice.

Then the hole is backfilled and compacted in layers. Loose fill is what makes a patch sink and crack a year later, and Richmond’s clay does not forgive a rushed backfill.

The same style of repair closed back up in exposed aggregate. The patch is visible if you look for it; most people do not.

About the patch matching

We will not tell you a patch disappears. On an exposed aggregate deck like the one above we match the stone as closely as we can source it, and the new concrete cures lighter than the old for the first few months before it weathers in.

On a plain broom finish deck a patch is easier to hide. On stamped or stained concrete it is harder, and we will say so before we start rather than after. If the finish is one that will never match well, that is worth knowing while you still have the choice of repair method.

When opening the deck is the wrong answer

Sometimes it is. If a line has failed in three places already, or the pipe is thin wall and brittle throughout, cutting a fourth hole is throwing money at a pipe that is going to fail again. In that case rerouting the line on a new path — often around the deck rather than under it — costs less over five years than a series of patches.

We would rather tell you that on the first visit than on the third.

What to do before we arrive

Two things help more than anything else. Mark the water level with a piece of tape and note how much you lose in twenty four hours. And walk the deck barefoot in the early morning: a warm damp patch, a section that has settled, or a joint that stays wet long after the rest has dried are all worth pointing out.

We cover Richmond and the rest of Fort Bend County for return line repair and full leak detection. Call (346) 850-9775 or book online.

Common Questions

How big a hole do you cut in a pool deck?

On a leak that has been properly located, usually around eighteen inches across — enough to work two hands and a saw around the pipe. The size depends on how precisely the leak was pinpointed before the saw came out, not on the repair itself.

Will the concrete patch match my existing deck?

It will be close but not invisible. Exposed aggregate and plain finishes match well once the new concrete has weathered a few months. Stamped and stained decks are harder, and we will tell you that before we cut rather than afterwards.

Why not just dig around the deck instead of through it?

Sometimes we do, when the leak is near the edge. But pool lines usually run under the slab, and reaching a leak in the middle of the run from the side means tunnelling blind under concrete you cannot see or support.

Will We Have to Break Up Your Deck to Fix the Leak? yazısı ilk önce Orbit Houston Pool Leak Detection üzerinde ortaya çıktı.

Book Your Appointment

Orbit — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 02:26:01 +0000

Book Your Appointment yazısı ilk önce Orbit Houston Pool Leak Detection üzerinde ortaya çıktı.