Pool Leak Detection
in Rustenburg

It depends mostly on how many lines have to be tested and whether anything must be dug up to reach the leak. As a market guide, the Kandua price guide (July 2026) puts household leak detection and repair at about R1,200 to R2,800, and a pool with several return and suction lines can take longer. The call-out fee is given to you when the plumber phones, and the repair is quoted in writing once the leak is found. Doing the bucket test first costs nothing and may show there is no leak at all.

The bucket test tells you. Stand a bucket of pool water on a step, mark the level inside it and the pool level outside it, and compare them after 24 hours without swimming or topping up. A pool that loses more than its bucket is losing water through a hole, not into the air. If both have dropped by the same amount, it is evaporation.

That usually points to the pressure side: the return pipes that carry water from the filter back to the pool, or the fittings at the pump and filter. With the pump off those pipes are not under pressure, so the leak slows or stops. Check the backwash or waste line too, because a worn spider gasket in the multiport valve sends water to waste whenever the pump runs.

By testing rather than digging. Every return and suction line is tested separately under pressure, which shows which pipe is leaking, while the shell, weir and fittings are checked with dye in still water. Only once a line has failed its test is the route narrowed down, and paving is lifted at the spot agreed with you.

It depends on your policy, and the pipe itself is often excluded. In posts on MyBroadband in 2011, one pool owner was told by an insurer that damaged pool pipes were not covered, and another reported a cap of about R5,000 per event. Read your schedule or ask your broker before work starts. If you do claim, photos of the leak and an itemised invoice help the assessor.

Usually, yes. The water only has to come down below the weir, not out of the pool, and the joint between the weir and the shell is then cleaned and resealed. A weir box that has cracked right through may need more work, which is quoted once it has been seen.

There is no single normal figure. Evaporation changes with the sun, the wind, the heat and whether the pool is covered, so a number that suits one pool on one day can be wrong for the next. The bucket test answers it for your pool: whatever the bucket loses is that day's evaporation, and anything the pool loses beyond that is a leak.

It cuts evaporation, because it keeps sun and wind off the water, but it does nothing for a leak. If a covered pool keeps dropping, take the cover off and run the bucket test with the pump on its normal cycle, then again with the pump off. A cover also helps when water is short, because less has to be put back.