Manhattan doesn't have many pools, and the ones it has aren't backyards — they're rooftop amenity pools in residential towers, health-club lap pools, and a handful of courtyard installations. They share a common constraint: everything — the pump, the filter, the heater, the returns — is packed into a small equipment room or closet, with plumbing runs that are short, tightly routed, and not easy to get to. That changes how pool plumbing is diagnosed and repaired here.
What we work on
- Circulation pumps — the pump that moves water through the filter and returns. Noise, loss of prime, and motor failures are the usual calls.
- Pool heaters and heat exchangers — gas and electric heaters that keep a rooftop pool usable into the cooler months, with the same combustion and venting considerations as any water heater.
- Leaks in the pool plumbing — pressure-side and suction-side leaks that drop the water level faster than evaporation explains.
- Valves and returns — multiport valves, diverter valves, and return fittings that control flow and direction.
- Filtration plumbing — the pipe runs between pump, filter and pool, where leaks most often appear at the unions and fittings.
Diagnosing a pool leak
A pool losing water isn't always leaking — evaporation and splash-out account for real loss, and a rooftop pool in wind loses more than people expect. We start by confirming it's actually a leak: a bucket test measures evaporation against the pool's actual drop. If the pool is losing more than evaporation explains, we isolate the plumbing from the shell — pressure-testing the lines, inspecting fittings and returns, dye-testing around skimmers and lights — to find whether the water is escaping through a pipe or through the pool structure itself. The repair is completely different depending on the answer, and we won't quote one until we know which it is.
How this fits with the rest of our work
Pool plumbing uses the same skills as the rest of our work — pumps, heaters, valves, pressure testing, leak tracing — just applied to a closed loop instead of a one-way supply. A pool heater is a heater; a pool pump is a pump. What's different is the system around them, and the fact that the whole installation lives in a space where access is hard and winterization matters. Rooftop pools that aren't drained and protected properly before winter are where a lot of spring-opening leaks come from — the same freeze physics that splits outdoor plumbing.
A pool losing water fast enough to threaten the pump (running a circulation pump dry destroys the seal) is an emergency — shut the pump off and call. Heater failures that leak or produce gas odors are emergencies too. For planned equipment replacement or a recurring loss you want diagnosed, use our quote request.