After performing thousands of swimming pool leak detections in my career, I have noticed many different types of skimmer leaks for different types of reasons. One reason that ties into all leaks in all skimmers is when we find that customers or their pool services put chlorine tablets directly in the skimmer. Not only does the chlorine eat up skimmer baskets and weir doors, it straight out eats away at copper plumbing directly beneath.
Take a look at the pictures below and see for yourself what we recently found performing a swimming pool leak detection in Thousand Oaks.
Healthy skimmer copper pipe
This picture shows a thick healthy portion of the copper pipe located 3 feet back from the skimmers entry.
Deteriorating copper line
This picture is a section of plumbing directly underneath the skimmer which shows how thin the walls of the copper are.
The copper literally flakes off in your hand.
The lesson to be learned —–buy a floating chlorine tablet feeder or install an inline feeder at the pump. This small investment can save you thousands of dollars in pool leak detections and repairs the long run.
Caltech Pools
