Leaking Pool Light Repair

Leaking Pool Light Repair

You have undoubtedly previously heard that pool lights are a highly popular location for leaks to begin if you have a leak or unexplained water loss in your swimming pool. This article aims to explain why pool lights in particular frequently leak and what you can do to prevent this if you think your pool light may be doing so. A pool light may leak in a number of ways, but the majority of leaky pool lights are caused by one very typical method, which is the cord seal at the point where the electrical conduit attaches to the rear of the light niche.

You should be aware that there are many different types of pool lights available before we delve too deeply into the technical causes of pool lights' propensity to leak. The ones that are installed now are different from the ones that were sold ten years ago, and even those are hardly recognisable from the ones that were sold twenty-five years ago. Your light might not look exactly like the examples on this page, but all lights struggle with the same mechanical process of connecting a wire via a conduit and into an underwater light fixture. It is challenging to get a wire into a conduit while still being able to close off the area where the wire enters with a watertight seal.

Safety issues - Depending on where you live and how old your pool is, pool lighting may occasionally be line voltage of 120 volts or low voltage of 12 or 14 volts. It is recommended that any electrical circuit leading to a pool light be GFI protected, although older swimming pools may not necessarily have this feature. Water and electricity should not be combined, and putting untrained hands in the situation is a recipe for disaster. If you even have the smallest doubt that your pool light installation is secure, see an electrician. For the purposes of this illustration, pretend that you recently had the electrical authorities evaluate your pool and they informed you that the light is safe but may be leaking. You would be left in this predicament knowing your light is safe to be around and inspect, but you have cause to assume it is leaking. After all, they are an electrical authority, not leak detection and repair professionals. You can now continue with the light leak repair after turning off the light's breaker.

enquire with Steve the pool

Should water enter the conduit for your pool light?
Should water be possible to enter the conduit carrying the electricity?

Because it depends on the type of lighting you have and how your pool was constructed, the answer to this is a maybe rather than a certainty. Some lights foresee water in the electrical conduit, which extends up to four feet above water before coming to an end with a junction box.

Some swimming pools feature a junction box, also known as a deck box, located right above the location of the pool light. This is advantageous since having a quick pull for the wire would be quite helpful if you ever needed to remove the light. While it is not advisable for you to do this, it is important to realise that some lights can be extremely difficult to work on. If your closest junction box for the light is 50 or more feet away from the pool, for example, I have serious doubts about my ability or anyone else's ability to remove the current light wire, let alone pull a new one in. This is one of the reasons electricians and pool workers don't rush to submit bids for pool light jobs. You won't truly understand how much labour they can be until you begin.

When discussing leaky pool lights generally, there are many technical factors to take into account. I worry that I am veering too far from the topic, but I need you to understand that there are many different configurations you could have, and this just makes things more complicated when you are trying to find a fix for water loss in your pool. Some lights' conduits contain water, whereas others do not. Some lamps come with a cord stopper or a water seal; others don't. Some still do, but over time, it has failed. Some people attempt to permanently seal the cord using epoxy, JB Weld, or some other method. Absolutely never should this be done. You can't make a fix that makes it impossible to continue using the light. That was so crucial, I'll say it one more:

You must not select a repair that makes it impossible to provide additional service to the lamp.

It's reasonable to say that it would be safer and preferable if there was no water in the conduit, regardless of whether your pool light was built with the goal of allowing water access to the electrical conduit or not. Simply said, this is a leak waiting to happen. Electrical conduit is smaller, weaker, and thinner than schedule 40 PVC pool piping. If you don't support and bed a pipe that small properly, it will easily bend and snap under a misplaced footstep or when a wheelbarrow of gravel is dumped on it. Schedule 40 electrical conduit may also be available in 1/2" or 3/4" sizes. Even though it would be simple to break the electrical conduit pipe, which is a real problem, there is still a bigger weak point in many pools.

Common pool light leak point

Please excuse my close nipples. The threaded adapter known as close nipples can be used, for instance, to join a PVC electrical conduit to the female threads of a stainless steel light niche. To attach your PVC electrical conduit into the light niche right away, you might utilise a PVC threaded male adapter with some thread sealant that is typically around 3/4" in size. If you did that, as many builders do, your pool design now has a catastrophic fault. Or, at the very least, a weak connection. The electrical conduit, which is easily movable in the ground as the earth around your pool settles over time, and your light niche, which is immovably attached to the pool wall, are connected by the sheer force that this fitting accepts as the transition point.

With the shifting and settling of the earth around a swimming pool, a PVC male adapter is very prone to shear off, creating a significant risk of leaks in any pool. If your pool is the type where the light conduit is supposed to contain water, then a significant amount of water is currently missing from it. What then is the answer to this issue? First, use a brass close nipple that transitions to a PVC threaded female adapter rather than a PVC male adapter to connect to a light niche. Brass is always more expensive than other materials, so using this alternate method to make the same transition does cost more money. However, this money is better used to create a pool that will hold water over the long haul. The female PVC adapter is naturally stronger by design because it is an exterior fit rather than an inside thread and the brass tight nipple will not shear like the PVC male adapter will.

The issues with pool lights that leak don't end there. This is merely the easiest explanation for why water is escaping from your pool through the light niche or electrical conduit. The fact that the electrical cord's composition alters with time is a significant additional issue. Over time, the pool light wire has a tendency to absorb water, become larger, and modify how it fits into the electrical conduit. If a temporary material, such as silicone, was used to seal the wire in the conduit (don't use silicone; it's not the right product for the job), changes in the light cord are likely to have compromised the seal that the silicone once created, allowing water to now easily leak past the silicone blob in your light. To stop water is difficult. Silicone was never the best material for the task at hand.

Duct seal compound: Packing a non-hardening duct seal compound around the cord site is one of the best ways to prevent pool lights from leaking from the cord seal or from a broken electrical conduit. If you can manage to get a good amount on, in and around the point where the cord from your lamp exits the niche, then you can successfully arrest the flow of water loss here. This compound is like a dense playdough and it will not shrink, harden or break over time. Although I loathe to use the word "fixed," I can assure you that many pools have been permanently fixed as a result of this temporary modification.

Butyl rubber tape is a good option for a repair to the chord leaving your light bulb because it is really sticky and won't harden over time. Ideally, you should be able to wrap the wire in butyl tape before sleeving portions of the tape around it on all sides and down into the hole. In this instance, more is preferable. After that, you would keep wrapping butyl tape around the light cord's end in an effort to secure it to the niche. You need additional butyl tape around the light and cable exit point to accommodate the wire's need for movement during the light's reinstallation without creating a new leak. Another quick fix that, in the ideal case, will last a long time is a cable seal for your lamp that you can make using butyl tape.

The concept of adding a cable seal to the light in the event that the current one has failed appeals to me even if it is a little more technically difficult than the two solutions mentioned above. Each lamp has a different size chord, which presents a technical problem because the repair must precisely match the new stopper. Additionally, keep in mind that the light cable may have gotten bigger with time, making what should initially fit perfectly a complete no-go. Pulling out your old light might not be an option, so there are some cord seal gaskets that have a slice up the side, like this split cord seal, to make it easier to install on a light without unplugging it and removing the cord. This is undoubtedly an advantage, but it does leave the door slightly more open than a perfectly installed cord seal without a slice. With fish tapes or, more typically, by pulling a wire pull string along with the wire when you pull it out, it should be simple enough to pull out and pull back in. After applying the cord seal to the wire, you can simply pull it back in. Sounds simple. It doesn't happen frequently. Here is a further illustration of a popular brand off pool light's split style cable seal: Grommet for a Pentair cord seal.

removing a conduit cord from a pool light

Sometimes it can be impossible to remove pool lights from the conduit, and if this occurs, significant surgery on your pool deck may be needed. To get the light from both sides, you might need to partially drain your pool because it can soon get out of control. You probably won't be able to remove the wire, even if the original installer simply used dish soap rather than wire pulling lubricant to pull the wire through the conduit.

The friction in the pipe is multiplied by ten when dried soap is present, and no matter how hard you pull, all but the shortest pipe runs will not come out. Because of this, I'm prone to suggest using a split cord seal rather than attempting to detach or yank out your lights. You may easily break the light chord, forcing you to buy an expensive new light right away. Additionally, you would need to cut the electrical connections for the light, which would need you to consult an electrician. To halt a leak from this area, a split gasket can be attached to the light cable (and frequently the bonding wire cord) and then wedged into the niche conduit exit point. To assure that I was achieving a leak-free seal, or at least as close as you can go with a bandaid type repair like this, I would personally use both a new cord seal stopper and the duct seal compound.

In a perfect world, you would replace your light, your cord seal, or both at the same time as having the GFI and bonding for your light checked. A leaky pool light is not an issue you can ignore, and pool safety is well worth the investment. Unfortunately, pool owners will turn to less expensive means to stop the flow of water through defects in their light due to the limited repair alternatives, or at least limited economical repair options. If you try to ignore the issue or use the incorrect product, such as silicone, JB weld, or epoxy to try and remedy this leak, you will be far worse off than if you use the duct seal, butyl tape, or new cord seals as suggested in this article.
 

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