Sarasota County, Florida
Pool Leak Detection and Repair in Sarasota, FL
If you live in Sarasota 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 water bill crept up three months straight, or the level drops faster than the season explains. That is the mystery we solve. Aqua Leak Detection is based right here in Sarasota County, in nearby Nokomis, and has been finding and fixing hidden pool leaks across Southwest Florida since 2003. Sarasota is one of our 25 cities. 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 in Sarasota
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.
What we can tell you is that a pool almost never gives up water where its owner expects it to. It is a fitting, a return line, a skimmer throat, a light niche. The dramatic crack in the floor that people picture is the rare one.
Half the housing in the City of Sarasota was built before 1976. That is the census median year built, from the American Community Survey's 2024 five year estimates.
Of the city's 32,324 housing units, the 1970s is the single biggest build decade at 7,077 units. The 1950s come next at 5,037, then the 1960s at 3,929. Roughly 18,890 units, about 58 percent of the city, went up before 1980.
Palmer Ranch, the newer end of the picture, was approved by the county on December 18, 1984, for 14,200 residential units, which makes it genuinely newer ground than the city's 1976 median.
Palmer Ranch carries a Sarasota mailing address, zip 34233.
But it is not in the City of Sarasota. It is an unincorporated census designated place in Sarasota County. We mention it because it is the kind of thing you only get wrong if you are not from here.
In our experience, the 1970s streets and the newest ones lose water the same way. The era moves where we start listening. It has never once decided what we find.
And the fear with the best marketing is the least true here. Florida's official Subsidence Incident Reports database counts 10 subsidence incidents in all of Sarasota County.
What we can tell you is that in twenty years of Sarasota County calls the answer has been plumbing, not geology. Small, quiet, findable.
Query the USDA soil data at downtown Sarasota and what comes back is EauGallie-Myakka fine sand.
The USDA describes EauGallie as a very deep, very poorly to poorly drained flatwoods soil, the same series that turns up far inland. So this is flatwoods ground that happens to lie near a coast, which is a different thing from coastal ground.
What we see on these calls is that when the ground is already holding water, a leak has nowhere obvious to go. No wet spot, no soft ground, nothing on the deck. The pool just quietly drops. That is the whole reason this is a specialist's job and not a walk around the yard.
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, and the shortest sentence on this page: Sarasota is ten minutes from our door. 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.
Sarasota pool leak questions, answered
Is Sarasota sinkhole country? My neighbor is sure it is.
The short answer is no, and the state keeps the count. Florida's official Subsidence Incident Reports database records 10 subsidence incidents in all of Sarasota County.
So the honest answer is no, and we would rather tell you that on the phone than let you spend a week worrying about the wrong thing.
We are on Bird Key. Do you come out on the keys?
Yes, all of them.
Lido Key, St. Armands Key, Bird Key and the northern portion of Siesta Key all sit inside the Sarasota city limits.
They are all one Sarasota trip for us, ten minutes up the Trail from our Nokomis office. Same trucks, same method, same guarantee.
Our house is from 1971. Is the pool a money pit waiting to happen?
In our experience, a 1971 pool is not a money pit in waiting, whatever the year on the deed suggests. We have found original Sarasota work from that era holding water perfectly, and we have chased leaks out of pools barely old enough to have a warranty. The age sets where we look first and nothing more.
Before any repair, you get the exact cost of the fix in writing, so the decision stays yours.
Palmer Ranch: city or county?
County. Palmer Ranch is an unincorporated census designated place in Sarasota County, not the City of Sarasota.
It does carry a Sarasota mailing address, zip 34233.
It is the kind of thing you only get wrong if you are not from here, and either way it is the same trip for us.
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 in Sarasota:
- 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.
Ready to solve your Sarasota pool leak?
Stop watching the water line drop and wondering. Let us find out exactly where it is going. Call Aqua Leak Detection and put a 23-plus-year Southwest Florida specialist on the case.
Phone
(941) 270-6138Office
121 Triple Diamond Blvd UNIT 13, Nokomis, FL 34275
Hours
Monday to Friday, 8:00am to 4:00pm