Welcome to Part 9, wherein we talk about installing the liner  (actually, dropping the liner will be part 10 – we’ve got to be sure your pool is ready to accept the liner first)

Your floor is all set, so you think. Double and triple check the floor! If you used vermiculite, sweep the floor at least 3X and pay attention to where you are sweeping, you WILL notice imperfections that should be addressed and, on your first sweep, you’ll pull the pins that held the strings and have to patch them.

As opposed to the normal vermiculite mix you used to trowel the bottom, the patching mix should be heavier on cement and WET, this will help you ‘feather in’ the patches. I use a 5 gal. bucket to mix it in, I ‘parfait’ the mix (3” of verm., 1/4” cement, another 2 -3” verm. And ~ ½” cement and mix it dry before adding water) using a ‘margin trowel’ [it has a square edge] helps to insure that there are no pockets of unmixed material in the bottom)

The sweeping process is a great chance to ‘level out’ your toweling. You can site down the various slopes and plains to see if you are OVERLY high or low. Low spots can be filled in with the patch mix and high spots can be scraped down with your trowel Please remember to sweep 2X after the patch material has ‘set up’! You DO NOT want any debris on the floor when you drop the liner!!!!!

When I say ‘sweep’ I’m talking about using a SOFT bristle ~2’ wide deck broom – you don’t want to sweep with a hard bristle broom (you’ll just end up digging into the fresh verm). Try to keep the bristles dry! Wet can keep you from getting all the dust/ small bits up!

After the first sweep, clean the walls/ any surface that will be under the liner! Use a trowel to remove any vermiculite/ concrete ‘splats’ and wipe the walls with a cloth to remove dirt and dust.



OK, you think the floor is all you have to take care of? Guess again! You need to install the coping (or liner receiver, if you’re going with a cantilever deck). Before you do that, however, you should duct tape all the seams on the walls/ stairs – you want the vessel to be ~ airtight before you introduce the liner to the pool. Now install the coping – this should be as easy as putting it on the wall so the lip is flush with the panels and screwing it down (sometimes the corners are a little off – I’ll help you with that if you have a problem, but it’s for another post) Sight down the walls and corners once it’s in place and make sure everything looks straight. Once you’ve got the coping all on, duct tape the inside edge (remember that we want the pool to be ~ airtight)

Now put on all the under the liner gaskets, you can use duct tape or spray glue for this, make sure the screw holes line up and try not to cover the holes with the duct tape. If you choose to use wall foam put it on and cut it out from around the gaskets (I’ll have to make an ‘addendum’ for wall foaming a pool- if anyone wants/ needs it).

With one more sweeping of the floor, you’re ready to drop your liner 

** I forgot to mention your shoes you want a ~smooth soled shoe with no heel! Why mar your new verm bottom?? Don't wear any shoes that could dig into the fresh bottom!**

Here's a small preview of part 10

link.

I'm sorry for the delay but this is a really tough article to write! (every time I start writing a new paragraph or sentence, I realize something I forgot to mention previously and have to go back and incorporate it and change the wording I had used to have it match with the stuff I had already written, oh yeah and I also have to write the definitive manual for caring for and working on the 5 pools and hot tub at work (& I've got to make this manual so comprehensive that a 6th grader could follow it) while, simultaneously making sure that our pools will be compliant with the new regulations for public pools that took effect last Sept., procuring the materials to be compliant, and coming up with a 'grocery list' of chems to have on hand to switch the pools over to quasi-BBB (and I'm a pour [ ] speller and s-l-o-w typist ))

Please bear with me for the next few weeks

Hey Buddy quick question. I've got some patching to do on my button should i wait until the patch has dried or should i install the new liner over the wet patch?

If you don't step on the patch while installing the liner, you can patch and then immediately install the liner