PondCheck: Pool Leak Test

Is your pond really leaking, or is it just evaporation?

PondCheck runs the bucket test that pond and pool professionals recommend. Place a bucket in the water, mark both levels, wait a day, and measure again. Because the bucket sits in the same weather as your pond, its drop is your evaporation — measured, not estimated. Whatever your pond loses beyond that is the difference PondCheck reports as leak.

No sensors, no hardware, no subscription. Just a bucket, a ruler, and your iPhone.

HOW IT WORKS
1. Float or stand a bucket in the water and fill it to match the pond level.
2. Mark both levels and start the test in PondCheck.
3. A Live Activity counts down 24 or 48 hours so the second reading never slips your mind.
4. Enter both drops. PondCheck lines them up and shows the gap.

WHAT YOU GET
• Side-by-side view of pond drop vs bucket drop
• The difference in mm or inches per day, converted to liters or gallons per day
• A weekly figure, so you can see what the loss really costs you
• Live Activity countdown for the second reading
• Rainfall during the test fetched automatically, flagged as a confidence warning — rain falls equally into both, so it cancels out in the difference and is never subtracted from your result
• Pump-off vs pump-on comparison to help you narrow the search to plumbing or to the liner
• Ponds, swimming pools, rainwater tanks, livestock troughs and aquariums
• Metric and imperial, liters and gallons
• Fully offline, no account, no data collection

WHY THE BUCKET MATTERS
Evaporation swings enormously with sun, wind, humidity and water temperature. A hot windy week can pull down a pond fast enough to look alarming. The bucket removes the guesswork: it sits in exactly the same weather, so its drop is the real evaporation for your yard on those exact days. No model, no averages, no assumptions.

FOR POOL OWNERS
A pool that drops a little every day is normal. A pool that drops more than the bucket is not. Run the test once with the pump off and once with it on. If the loss grows when the pump runs, the plumbing side is worth a closer look. If it stays the same, the shell or liner is the more likely place to check.

PondCheck reports what you measure. It does not diagnose the cause of a leak or replace an inspection by a professional.