Is My Pool Leaking or Just Evaporating? How to Tell with a Bucket Test

Before you pay anyone to find a leak, run a 24-hour bucket test. It's the fastest way to tell whether your pool is actually leaking or just losing water to evaporation — and in an Oklahoma summer, a lot of "leaks" turn out to be evaporation. The test costs nothing and takes one day.

How to run a bucket test

• Fill a 5-gallon bucket with pool water and set it on the second step of the pool.
• Mark the water level inside the bucket and the pool level outside it (a piece of tape works).
• Turn off the pump and any autofill, and don't swim, for 24 hours.
• After 24 hours, compare how far each dropped.

Because the bucket water and the pool water sit in the same sun and wind, they evaporate at the same rate. So the bucket cancels evaporation out of the math.

What counts as normal evaporation in Oklahoma

On a hot, dry, windy Oklahoma summer day, losing roughly a quarter to a half inch of water is normal evaporation — not a leak. Wind especially drives it up. If both your bucket and your pool dropped about that much and about the same amount, you most likely don't have a leak.

What the result means

• Pool dropped noticeably more than the bucket — you have a real leak worth finding.
• Pool and bucket dropped about the same — it's evaporation, and a cover or windbreak will help more than a service call.

Found a leak? Here's what's next

If the bucket test points to a real leak, that's what our flat-rate pool leak detectionis for — $499 inground or $399 above-ground, with the vessel repairs we can make included and no trip charges. We pinpoint it with electronic detection, pressure testing, and dye testing instead of guesswork. Call us and we'll get you on the schedule.