Swimming pool leak detection and repair in Bali

Detection runs in a fixed order, because the cheap tests eliminate the expensive theories. A bucket test separates evaporation from a genuine loss. Isolating the pump and comparing drop rates tells us whether the water is leaving through the shell or through the circulation. Then each line — skimmer, main drain, returns, cleaner — is plugged and pressure-tested individually and held, so a failing pipe announces itself on a gauge instead of in an estimate.

Only then do we go looking with dye and acoustic listening, at the places the earlier tests point to: light niches, floor-return fittings, the tile band at waterline, structural cracks in the shell. You receive a written report with the drop rate in millimetres per day, the pressure result for every line, photographs, and a repair quote covering only what actually failed. If your pool is simply meeting the dry season, the report says that too.

Evaporation or a leak — the number that settles it

An open pool in Bali loses water with nothing wrong at all. Through the dry season, with sun, breeze and 30 °C afternoons, 4–7 mm a day is ordinary — roughly 5,000 litres a month on a 25 m² pool. Add splash-out from a full villa and a wind-exposed Bukit site and the figure climbs further. Plenty of pools get opened up on suspicion when the arithmetic says nothing is wrong.

The bucket test settles it in two days. A bucket of pool water stands on the top step with the level marked inside and out; both surfaces face the same air, so whatever the pool loses beyond the bucket is a leak. Anything above about 10 mm a day over the bucket rate is worth investigating. We begin every job here because it costs almost nothing and it stops us selling you a survey you do not need.

Where Bali pools actually fail

The pattern is consistent across the island. Roughly half of confirmed leaks sit in the plumbing — glued PVC joints stressed during backfill, or pipe runs crushed where a deck was later built over them. Another third are fittings: return eyeballs, main-drain collars, light-niche conduits and skimmer throats cracked when the surrounding deck settled onto soft fill.

Genuine shell failure is the minority, and it is usually differential settlement on a slope site or a construction joint that was never waterstopped. That matters commercially, because the shell crack is the repair owners fear. When we find one we photograph it, explain whether it is structural or cosmetic, and repair by injection and localised re-tiling wherever the structure allows. Full re-tiling is a last resort here, not an opening offer.