Cusser

I have a 15 ft. above ground pool, 20 years now. Note that I'm in Arizona however. I use an inexpensive solar bubble cover in spring and in fall to warm the water. It also prevents cooling evaporation at night. A heater with solar panels will only do its stuff if the pump is on to circulate the water. I imagine similar for a gas-fueled heater. See https://www.doheny.com/pool-supplies/above-ground/equipment/heaters

I have a 15 ft above ground pool, and use an inexpensive solar cover in spring and fall. The sunlight heats the upper top foot of the water, but the pump comes on with my timer and does a decent job mixing it.

A little loss in a month, less than 1/2 inch for me.

No owner's manual?????????????????

Seems high to me as well. I have a 1988 CalSpa, and it's definitely not worth $1800.

I've never used Ahh Some, 32.5 years with same spa. I think the guy feels Ahh Some might dissolve the newly made seal from the leak seal product.

I think that resulted in my children.... No, I did NOT shut off the spa for 48 hours. I ran the spa as I described earlier, then just switched it to the always on/"no freeze"/thermostat control of 104F so it actually runs like 1.5 hours a day. In a couple of weeks I'll set the thermostat way lower and put on the timer function, as we don't add heat to the spa in the Arizona summer. When the kids were little, we used the spa as our backyard swimming pool in summer, just didn't heat; there were times we had to leave the cover off overnight to cool the water, as just the Arizona

I cannot see any reason why you or a plumber could not close off or bypass such spa.

"What's Cusser's method" I followed the instructions on my bottle of Leak Seal (from a competitor of Marlig) detailed in Post #2 of this thread, and copied below And still leak-free. So here's what I did, about 350 gallon spa: I removed the filter cartridge. I added about 4 oz. leak seal product while water was at about 100F - 104F (my use temperature), added to the spa water as mine doesn't have a skimmer. I ran with the jets on for a few hours, that's higher water pressure than just in "pump" mode and would recirculate the leak seal throughout. Then I turned the jets o

I also believe that it's mostly due to sunlight. The Arizona sun always wins. One has to simply look at anything here that's outside, from automobile paint, convertible tops, anything plastic.

Here's a photo of the old liner; the dark blue still-flexible part was shielded from both sun and pool water, as was under the top ledge. The dark blue part is still flexible and feels like good vinyl. but the pale part is quite brittle. I imagine contact with pool water/chemicals over the years affected it, but liners are supposed to be in contact with pool water !

I also was wondering - for "someday" - if a new Intex ready-set (not inflatable) pool could be used/converted to with my existing pump and sand filter? Any experience with that?

The liner felt very flexible and new. The existing liner was very brittle. Anyway: that's what I did. No - nothing between the wall and the liner; I just did what the previous "professional" installer did, but realize that he was no rocket scientist either !!!

All seems OK, and pool seems sturdy. One can see that the pool is lower at the area around the skimmer. Device on the left of the skimmer and pool net is an automatic water level device I made, using a common hardware shut off float (like for an evaporative cooler). 3rd photo is with inexpensive solar cover on.

If it's truly leaking at the cap, get a new sealing cap, or at least a new sealing washer, at the hardware store. Sealing caps are available in plastic or brass.