(Geophone) Underground electronic listening device

[SpaceCoast]

I know that I have a leak in my return line that goes to the waterfall. it is underground. I cannot tell where it is from the ground moving up or down. The waterfall is a separate line all to itself so i have it cut and capped. I'd like to get it going again. Does anyone know of any way to DIY one of these boys?

Would a stethoscope be usable in this situation? i have tried googling DIY geophone and other catch phrases with no luck.

i really do not want to start digging up my hole yard, also, the people who put my pool in did not have much room to work with in some places and very dumbly decided to stack all the pipes going to and from the pool in an area running between my house wall and the shed. so there is literally like 4 feet of room there and like 5 or 6 pipes all bundled up on top of each other.

Thanks

 

[Isaac-1]

I had a leak in a return line a couple of years ago and ended up having a professional leak detector come out to located it. And part of what he did to locate it was use what I assume was an electronic geophone, his looked like a coffee can on a stick with headphones. However that was unsuccessful and he ended up locating the leak the old fashion way with his ear to the ground. At which point he told me that the "machine" was great at locating whistling from pin holes, but did not do so good with larger holes.

Here is an overview of he technique he used:

1, turn off pool pump, it makes too much noise

2, plug all but one return fitting (he had handy adapters for this)

3. backfeed air / water through the remaining return eyeball fitting, at first he tried using air from a tank with a pressure regulator set very low, then when this did not locate the hole (too big of hole), he switched to a garden hose adapter, letting the hose fill with air before turning it on so it would gurgle.

4, After a few minutes or repeating step 3 and triangulation based on strength of sound he marked a X on the concrete and sure enough he was right within about 6 inches.

Ike

 

[SpaceCoast]

so did he dig under the concrete or cut through it? did he charge you extra for the repair? how much did he charge for the leak detection? thx

 

[Isaac-1]

He did leak detection only, marked the spot with an X cost was $375, he works out of a city about 100 miles away and makes a loop through my area about once per month, that day he had 5 jobs in my local area about half were pool related leaks. If I had done a special service call it would have been about $200 more. I rented a small electric jackhammer from a local hardware store (local / regional chain store) for $50 for 24 hours (equipment rental places wanted about twice as much), took about half an hour to get the 4x4 foot corner section up, I ended up having a handyman fix the pipe and mix and pour the replacement concrete using ready mix quick crete.

Ike

p.s. the handyman was already doing an assortment of odd jobs around the house, and had experience working with concrete from when he worked construction jobs as a young man, so I don't have a labor amount on that part, the pipe fitting was of course just a few cents, maybe a dollar, and I think the concrete mix was maybe $30-$40.

 

[SpaceCoast]

online, i see some leak detector websites where they cut and even square into the concrete. is there a special tool they use for that? thanks.

 

[Bama Rambler]

Most of the time they just use a cutoff saw with a concrete blade.

 

[canonfodder]

I had a leak in my line from the skimmer to the pump. The evidence was a constant supply of air mixing with the water going to the pump, through the filter and back out the return eyes. I tried an ultrasonic listening device but could not hear the leak. My in-ground pool has an 8 inch space between the pool wall and the concrete walk around the pool and we keep white marble chips there to cover the dirt.

My solution to finding this kind of leak.

This leak allows air to be sucked in when the pressure is low due to the pump pulling water from the skimmer and bottom drain. I would pick a spot to test and would feed it water long enough to soak the dirt all the way down to the pipe level, in my case about 3 feet down. If no change in the incoming air, (as seen at the filter pot at the pump input) occurred, I moved the soaking water further along the path of the underground pipe. When I got to the location of the leak, the water soaked area around the leak let water be pulled in but not air and the change from air to water was quite evident as the air bubbles stopped showing up at the pump.

I dug down where the test indicated and found a cheap plastic pipe splice which had cracked and let in the air.

So this worked in the case where suction not pressure is present in the pipe and air coming in can be seen in the line or other accessory.

What do you do when the leak is in a pressure line and lets water out into the ground? Perhaps arrange a re-routing of the suspect pipe to make it serve as a suction line feeding water to the pump and look for air and then not air when the ground is soaked with water. This presumes you can arrange the re-routing and that you can get water soaking down to the possible leak location. If your concrete goes right to the side of the pool, you have been left without a valuable access to the pipes. For shame on whomsoever did that to you.