Pool Plumbing in Phoenix & Scottsdale, priced before we start.
How much water should a Phoenix pool lose in a week of July? More than most owners guess. Sun, dry air and wind can take a quarter inch or more off the surface in a day, and an auto-fill valve quietly puts it back. Which is exactly how a leaking pool line can run for an entire summer without anyone noticing, until the water bill does.
There is a free way to tell the two apart. Set a bucket on the pool step, fill it until the water inside matches the pool, and mark both levels. Turn off the auto-fill. After 24 hours, compare. The bucket shows evaporation; if the pool dropped noticeably more, the difference is going somewhere else. Run it once with the pump on and once with it off, and the results start pointing to which side of the plumbing is at fault.
A pool’s plumbing is a loop. Water leaves through the skimmers and main drain on the suction side, passes through the pump, filter and heater on the equipment pad, and comes back through the return jets. Most of that loop is PVC buried under the deck. A suction-side leak tends to pull air in, so you see bubbles at the returns and a pump that struggles to hold prime. A return-side leak pushes water out, often into the soil between the pool and the pad.
Phoenix is hard on every part of it. Exposed PVC on the pad turns chalky and brittle after enough summers in direct sun. Decks shift on expansive clay and crack the skimmer where it joins the shell. And the water grows harder as it evaporates and gets topped up, leaving scale in heaters and valves. Hard water in the Valley is a pool story as much as a kitchen one.
We handle the plumbing side: finding leaks in the lines, repairing skimmers and pipe under the deck, and repiping tired equipment pads. Lines are pressure tested before and after, and you get photographs of what was found. Plaster, tile and motor rebuilds belong to other trades, and we will tell you which.
Signs the pool is losing more than weather
The pool drops faster than the bucket
Evaporation is steady and predictable. A loss well beyond the bucket, day after day, is a leak. It is the most reliable sign there is, and it costs nothing to check.
Air bubbles from the return jets
Air in the returns means air is getting into the suction side, often at a cracked fitting, a loose pump lid or a worn valve. The pump works harder than it should the whole time.
A pump that keeps losing prime
A pump basket that half-empties overnight, or a pump that runs dry after a restart, suggests a suction leak that draws air while running and lets water drain back when it stops.
Wet ground between the pool and the pad
Soggy soil in July, a stripe of weeds doing suspiciously well, or a paver settling along the return run. Water that leaves a pipe underground has to surface somewhere.
Does the auto-fill ever stop?
The float valve hides a leak by replacing whatever escapes. Turn it off for a few days and watch the level. The hidden leak calculator shows what a steady loss adds up to over a year.
Cracks where the skimmer meets the deck
A thin crack around the skimmer throat is usually the deck moving on the soil beneath it. Water finds that gap, and the gap widens every summer.
Finding it before we dig
- 01
Bucket test, then dye
We confirm the loss is real, then release dye at fittings, skimmer throats and light niches, anywhere the shell meets the plumbing. A thread of dye drawn into a crack answers a lot of questions quickly.
- 02
Each line, pressurized on its own
Lines are plugged at the pool end and pressure tested one at a time: each skimmer, the main drain, each return. The one that won’t hold is the one we pursue, and acoustic listening narrows the spot under the deck.
- 03
A small opening, not a trench
With the leak pinpointed, we cut only the concrete over it, repair the pipe, retest, and patch. A square of new deck beats a scar across the whole patio.
- 04
When the pad itself is the problem
Sun-baked PVC, weeping unions and valves that no longer seal usually mean the equipment pad should be repiped as a whole. New pipe gets painted or covered so the sun doesn’t restart the clock, and the fill line gets a proper backflow preventer.
What it costs
Quoted flat, before we start
Leak location is most of the answer. A crack at the skimmer is a different job from a return line under 20 feet of pavers. Deck material, the number of lines involved, and whether the pad needs a full repipe also move the number. A pad repipe paired with new equipment can be spread out with financing.
Financing is available on larger jobsA pool in Phoenix is a large, expensive way to hold water in the sun. It may as well hold all of it.
Pool Plumbing: questions we get asked
Straight answers, the same ones we give on the phone.
