Hello there and thank you for taking the time to read my story.

I have a dimension1 californian. about 5 years old. It was winterized by my wife and I. We drained all the water we could by pumping out, then towel dried, used a shop vac to suck water out of the pipes, blew air through them, and fianlly left all of the pipe junctions around the pump open. We did not use any anti-freeze, because from what I had read we would be fine if we got out all of the water.
I guess maybe we did not.

I filled the tub on Sunday. Turned the power back on, fired it up, and both pump are running strong. The heater is running well and we were up from 55 to 95 degrees overnight.

We are also abot an inch lower on the water level. When I got home from work on Mon I noticed that the area below one side of the spa is wet. There is no water in the control/pumpp area. It must be leaking out from below the spa?!?

The spa is set about half way concealed in a deck, sitting on a cement slab. access to the side panels is pretty well blocked, but I have removed enough decking to remove the back panel and one side panel. All I see is what apppears to be cardboard, but it very hard. I assume this is some skin applied to the outside of the fiberglass shell. There is a 2x4 frame that seems to be the frame of the spa, and it all appears to rest on some sort of wooden box/ sub frame.

On the side where the slab was wet, the internal 'carboard' backing seems wet too. I can not even begin to see how I would get access to any return pipes or any of the internal drains. Do I need to fully empty the spa, and jack it up?

I am a fairly determined diy'er, and I can't afford to have someone come out and do the dissasembly on an 15 minute rate.

Any tips on what I should be doing to locate the problem or how to access the workings of the spa will really be appreciated. My kids and I are SO dissapointed. We all love going in after a long day of work/school. I purchased a new cover in the fall, and haven't even installed the cover lift yet. I either need to figure out how to fix it, or get it out of the deck, so either way I guess I will be teearing out a lot of the decking

PLEASE HELP US IF YOU CAN

Thanks,

ar

I am no pro and can only share some ideas from our personal experience with our spa.

If you have no visible component leaks in the spa motor compartment and the compartment is dry then there are only two possible leak sources.

1. Crack (usually hairline) in the spa shell. You have to carefully examine the shell looking for something that looks like a pencil line or a hair that won't move when you touch it. If this is your problem it can be fixed from the underside of the shell.

2. Leaking spa plumbing.

Is there any evidence of pests - like rodents - in your spa area?

Typically, rigid and flexible PVC used in plumbing of spas seldom fails and leaks UNLESS some critter intrudes and lairs inside and bites into it.

Our spa sits on a deck we built ourselves. Over past 13 years we have seen roaches and a lot of frogs and some ants and even the occasional rat or black racer snake but no mice or rats (and we keep bait/poison in the area under our spa to keep them out).

Remember the source of a leak can be no where near where you see to water from the leak. If a spa is not perfectly level water can leak on one side and appear on the other side.

We currently have a leak that is visible entering the motor compartment through a hole cut for a air intake of our main pump. The source of this leak could be ANYWHERE. A leak specialist is coming next Tuesday - he may have to bore in from the underside through our foam insulation veritically or pry off sides and bore in horizontally. We have every confidence he will find and fix this leak but at an estimated cost of $300 to $500 - worth it if it fixes the leak.