Is your pool leaking, or is it just evaporation?

Topping up the pool is normal here. Evaporation in a Dubai summer is real and it is not a fault. The problem is that a slow leak looks exactly the same from the edge of the pool — you just add water more often and think nothing of it, for months.

The bucket test

You can separate the two yourself in twenty-four hours, and it costs nothing:

1. Fill a bucket with pool water and stand it on a step, so it is partly submerged.
2. Mark the water level inside the bucket and outside it, on the pool wall.
3. Leave the pump running as normal. Nobody swims for a day.
4. After twenty-four hours, compare the two drops.

If both dropped by about the same amount, that is evaporation and your pool is fine. If the pool dropped noticeably more than the bucket, water is going somewhere it should not.

What the pattern tells you

• Loses water only when the pump runs. Points at the pressure side — the return pipework pushing water out under pressure.
• Loses water only when the pump is off. Points at the suction side, or at the shell.
• Loses water either way, at the same rate. Usually the shell, the tiling or a fitting.
• Stops dropping at one particular level. Very useful. The leak is almost certainly at that height — a light fitting, a return inlet, or the skimmer throat.

Other things worth noticing

Wet ground or unusually green grass on one side of the pool. Settled or lifting deck tiles. A pump that loses its prime overnight. Cracked or shrinking grout along a single line rather than all over.

Why it is worth chasing early

A leak is rarely just lost water. It is also lost chemicals and lost heat, and it means water is moving through ground that was not built to be wet — which is what undermines a deck or a retaining wall over time. The repair for a fitting caught early is a very different job from a deck that has started to move.

If the bucket test says something is wrong, the next step is pressure-testing the lines and, if those hold, checking the shell. That is work for someone with the right kit — but the test above tells you whether you need them at all.