Sarasota County, Florida (Shared with Manatee County)
Pool Leak Detection and Repair on Longboat Key, FL
If you live on Longboat Key and have a pool that is losing water and you cannot see why, you are not imagining it, and you are not alone. Maybe the caretaker noticed first, or you did, one top-off at a time. That is the mystery we solve. Aqua Leak Detection works out of Nokomis, on the mainland in Sarasota County, and we have been solving hidden pool leaks on this coast since 2003. We will tell you exactly where the water is going, and what it will take to stop it.
Is it really a leak, or just a Florida summer?
Plenty of the calls we take turn out not to be leaks at all. In this heat a pool loses real water to plain evaporation, and an autofill can disguise either answer: it quietly keeps the level looking normal whether your pool is healthy or bleeding water underground, so the first sign you get is the water bill. Before you spend a dollar, do what we would do first.
The bucket test. Free, tonight, no tools.
- Fill a bucket with pool water and set it on a pool step, so it sits in the same sun and the same air as the pool.
- Mark the water level inside the bucket, and mark the pool's level on the outside.
- Turn off the autofill, and read both marks 24 hours later.
The bucket and the pool evaporate at the same rate. If the pool has dropped clearly further than the bucket, the difference is not evaporation. That is water leaving your pool, and it is time to call us. If the two marks track together, you have a Florida summer, not a leak, and you just saved yourself a service visit. Not sure what you are looking at? Call anyway. What we can tell you is that we would rather talk you out of a visit than book one you do not need.
What a pool leak usually turns out to be (and not be)
The picture in most owners' heads is a cracked shell and a jackhammered deck.
In our experience, the dramatic crack in the floor is the rare one. What we see on these calls is that the leak is usually small and usually on the plumbing side, at a fitting, a joint, a skimmer throat or a light niche, and usually nowhere near the spot the owner has been staring at.
Small also means findable without destruction. We pressure test the plumbing to prove which lines hold and which do not, and we use acoustic listening equipment to hear water escaping underground. Nothing gets opened on a hunch, because the guess is expensive and the test is not. You get the answer, and the exact cost of the fix, before any repair work begins.
What we see on Longboat Key
We have been finding pool leaks in Southwest Florida since 2003. More than 100,000 of them. What follows is not research. It is ours.
Longboat Key is one island split between two counties. It is almost equally divided between Manatee and Sarasota counties.
The county line runs through the island, and the Town says so itself. It puts Precinct 201 at Town Hall on Bay Isles Road for voters residing in the Sarasota County portion of Longboat Key, and Precinct 95 at Longboat Island Chapel on Gulf of Mexico Drive for voters residing in the Manatee County portion.
What we can tell you is that the county line is invisible from a pool deck. One island, one trip, one method.
This island is not merely sandy. The USDA's official description of the Canaveral series puts silt plus clay in the control section at under 5 percent, which means there is almost no binder in it at all.
It is also full of shells. The same description says shells run from 10 to 60 percent in some subhorizon within the control section, and gives the texture as coarse sand, sand, or fine sand.
And it is deep. USGS coring at Longboat Key found over 7 meters, about 23 feet, of Holocene sediment making up the barrier island section, reflecting a thicker lower section of channel fill that once occupied the spot.
The material right under the island is sand, not rock. USGS describes the present barrier facies as the typical nearshore, beach and dune deposits of sand and shelly sand, sitting above shelly channel deposits with abundant washover deposits over them.
What we see on these calls is that ground this quick is a magician: water that leaves a pool disappears downward with no puddle, no stain, no soft spot. On this island the level line is usually the only evidence there is.
The Town puts its own build era plainly: development started gradually but hit its activity peak in the 1960s and 1970s.
The census agrees, and it is specific. Of 9,935 housing units on Longboat Key, 3,438 went up between 1970 and 1979, 2,492 between 1980 and 1989, 1,742 between 1990 and 1999, and 1,049 between 1960 and 1969. That is 8,721 units, about 88 percent of the island's housing, built between 1960 and 1999. Only 667 units were built in 2000 or later. Those are the American Community Survey's 2024 five year estimates.
And then it stopped. The Town's own history says development has exhausted almost every acre of land, and the zoning has become even stricter.
In our experience, decades-old properties carry decades of renovations, and it is the renovation history, not the original build, that usually decides where a pool loses water.
What happens when you call Aqua Leak Detection?
We work like investigators, because that is what finding a hidden leak actually takes. Our whole process follows what we call the Private I's: Investigate, Identify, Inform.
Investigate.
We inspect your pool as a complete system, from the tile line to the bottom drain; from the skimmers and returns back to the equipment. Using methods like pressure testing to isolate the plumbing, along with acoustic listening devices to hear water escaping underground, we gather evidence before we draw any conclusions. No guessing, and no tearing up your deck on a hunch.
Identify.
Once the evidence is in, we pinpoint the exact location and cause of the leak. Our 23-plus years in Southwest Florida let us catch the issues that others walk right past.
Inform.
We call you on the way to your property, and we call you with results before we leave. You get a clear explanation of what we found, what it will take to fix it, and what it will cost, laid out before any work begins, and a written report with photos lands in your email for your records. No surprises.
...using a proven process of elimination to find every leak, not just the obvious one...
The practical part: Longboat Key is bridges and beach road from our Nokomis office, and we book the drive with the job. A detection visit typically runs 1.5 to 3 hours, and if the first slot of the day works best for you, 8:00am to 9:00am is offered and guaranteed.
What it costs, and how we handle the money
The detection visit is a flat rate, and it covers the dive test, the pressure test, and same-day epoxy patchwork at no extra charge. Larger repairs are a separate quote, and that quote reaches you before any repair work begins, so you decide with the number in front of you. If a repair lands at a bad time, we offer financing through Wisetack, so a surprise leak does not have to be a surprise expense. And the guarantee is a promise in plain words: we will continue working on your pool until it is leak free. Leaks are what we do. We are not a general pool-cleaning company that also dabbles in leaks, which is how the work holds 4.9 stars across more than 2,200 reviews.
Longboat Key pool leak questions, answered
Ours is a condo association pool. Do you work with managers and boards?
Longboat Key is a place of associations. The Town itself is at work in one right now, replacing water mains in Country Club Shores HOAs 1 through 3, using a pipe bursting technique, starting July 6, 2026.
What we can tell you is that a shared pool tests exactly like a private one, and the association gets the finding and the exact repair cost in writing. Boards do not need opinions. They need a number.
Why did nothing show up in the yard if the pool is really leaking?
The USDA soil query for Longboat Key returns Canaveral fine sand, which it classes somewhat poorly drained, and a water table value of 76 centimeters for these map units, about 30 inches.
That number is a minimum, not an average. It is the nearest the water table gets to the surface at any time during the year.
So nothing shows in the yard because there is nowhere for the water to show. On ground that drains this fast it goes straight down, and the level line on the tile is the only witness there is. That is why we test rather than wait for a wet spot.
We are at the north end. Is that still your territory?
Longboat Pass sits at the north end of the island, in Manatee County, connecting the Gulf of Mexico with the north part of Sarasota Bay and separating Anna Maria Island to the north from Longboat Key to the south.
What we can tell you is that the north end is as much our territory as the south. Both counties, both ends, same trip.
Will you have to dig up my deck or my yard?
Not on a hunch, and usually not at all for the finding. We prove the location with pressure testing and listening equipment first. If the repair itself means opening something, you will know exactly where, exactly why, and exactly what it costs before anyone touches it.
My autofill runs constantly. Is that a leak?
What we can tell you is that a constantly running autofill is how a lot of real leaks first announce themselves, and it is also exactly what a hot dry stretch looks like. The fill hides the evidence either way. Turn it off, run the bucket test above, and let the marks tell you which one you have.
What does the visit actually look like?
We call you on the way, the visit typically runs 1.5 to 3 hours, and you get the finding, the exact cost of the fix, and a written report with photos by email before any repair work begins.
If a repair is needed, you are already with the team that does it. Aqua Leak Detection handles the full range of pool leak work on Longboat Key:
- Pool Leak Detection
- Pool Leak Repair
- Pre-Sale Pool Inspections
- Line Clearing
- Pipe Elimination: Cut and Cap
- Light Fixture Replacement
- VGB Compliant Main Drain Cover Installation
One call, one specialist, from the first question to the last repair.
Let us find your Longboat Key leak.
You do not have to keep topping it off and hoping. Call Aqua Leak Detection and let us put an end to the guessing.
Phone
(941) 270-6138Office
121 Triple Diamond Blvd UNIT 13, Nokomis, FL 34275
Hours
Monday to Friday, 8:00am to 4:00pm