pool water loss

[OpaDC]

I'm hoping someone here can help with a problem. To make a long story short, my pool (concrete) has been slowly losing water the past couple of years, until recently in the neighborhood of 2/3 " per day. Few months ago that became about 6' / day. Now the real kicker. In the course of one week I have one foot of water left. I call a pool company and they come and and pressure test the lines. All okay (whew). It seems that the bottom drain has cracks all in it and has been repaired before.
This is now where I am looking for help. They say repair will cost about $2000 which involves breaking up concrete and replacing the cracked bowl and reconnecting it to the pipe. I'm thinking that money could buy me some NICE tools instead. All kind of fixes have gone through my pea brain, from quikrete to gluing a bucket with a hole in it to some sort of patching job. Thinking of option 3. Any suggestions on how to patch it? Fiberglass, epoxy, concrete with a pipe coming through? The drain is plastic now and about 6" diameter. In reality it only needs to be big enough to connect to the 1 1/2" pipe. One concern I have is the fact it will be underwater and subject to pool chemicals, specifically chlorine, which tends to degrade some substances. Any suggestions? I can try and take a picture if necessary.

[maxparot]

The plumbing is all straightforward once you get the concrete out of your way it's just cut and glue. The problem is the shotcrete in your way. I'm no expert but I'd probably start by scoring the concrete around the drain to confine any damage from the next step which would be to break out the concrete around the drain so you can get to the pipe and cut off the bad drain and add a new one. To break out the concrete use a SDS rotary hammer. After plumbing in the new drain use an adhesion promoter on the concrete before filling in around the drain with a concrete with latex additive. If your pool is pebbletec make sure you leave room for a layer over the concrete another way would be to add some tile around the patch to clean up the repair.