Refinishing / Restoring a Fiberglass Pool Slide

[varuscelli]

I have acquired an old fiberglass pool slide and am starting work on restoring it. The slide looks like it might be an SR Smith Rogue Grand Rapids slide (deck only, no legs, ladder or other hardware). I think this one is an older model of the Rogue Grand Rapids slide, but very similar to the current model. At least, this is the closest model that I can find resembling the one I acquired.

I have found several sites on the internet where pool slide restoration is discussed briefly, but I want to see what folks here might have to say about it.

My main question has to do with refinishing the deck itself, especially the paint to use. The deck is in quite good shape but for weathering and a couple of minor cracks. I will be repairing the cracks with marine-style fiberglass/epoxy repair material (I'm leaning toward Marine-Tex Epoxy Putty). The deck is also quite weather worn with powdered paint and the upper paint layer worn through or nearly worn through in a few areas.

So far, I have cleaned the slide thoroughly and am preparing to patch the minor cracks. After the patching, I need to make decisions on paint.

My thought is that many of the available marine epoxy paints for boats would be a good choice for repainting this slide. However, I have also seen recommendations for using pool paint like Ramuc Type EP Epoxy or Ramuc EP Hi Build Epoxy. The Ramuc stuff is pretty expensive, and I also don't think I can buy it in quantities smaller than 1 to 2 gallons at a time. Ramuc Hi Build comes in 2-gallon kits and Ramuc EP Epoxy comes in a 1-gallon kit. I like the idea of the Ramuc Hi Build, but spending $150-plus on paint alone (and buying more paint than I need) is not really the option I'd like to pursue unless it turns out the be the best recommendation.

The slide has a surface area of roughly 39 square feet with 13' x 3' of painted surface area. For most paints, I'd think at most I'd need somewhere between 1 and 2 quarts of paint to do a couple of coats over that surface area.

Any recommendations on the best paint for me to use?

Or other thoughts on my refinishing project?

Thanks in advance for any advice!

Al

 

[varuscelli]

PS,

Our slide (the deck, anyway) is the same one as shown in another post in this forum (Post Pics of your Repo Rehab):

http://www.troublefreepool.com/post-pics-of-your-repo-rehab-t11800.html

I'm thinking that slide is the SR Smith Rogue Grand Rapids, but with a slightly different water delivery than the current models. The newer ones seem to have a wider delivery slot at the top and these older ones have two smaller outlets for water (top of slide and midway down). I might be wrong about the slide make/model, but these sure look like the SR Smith Rogue Grand Rapids.

I'll post some pics later...and hopefully, more pics as the project moves along.

Al

 

[varuscelli]

OK, while I'm waiting for some feedback (which I hope will come), I'll post a few photos of my "project" slide.

Hopefully, someone can help me identify the manufacturer on this slide. Again, I think it's an SR Smith model.

Fresh off the trailer that I used to haul it home (with a lot of the surface wear visible):

 

[varuscelli]

Here are some shots of the few cracks I need to fix.

None are more than about 1 to 2 inches long, and all look like easy epoxy putty patch-and-sand jobs.

This is probably the worst crack, given its location on the exit lip (shown upside down). It's about 2 inches long.

Each of the handrail recesses is cracked along one bottom edge (each crack about 2 inches across).

One side of the slide next to one of the leg sockets is showing some underside separation in the fiberglass, but this should be an easy epoxy filler fix, too.

 

[varuscelli]

Here's what I rigged up in the mean time for my daughter and her friends to have some fun with (based on an old and unused Little Tyke's play set and a playground slide found on Craigslist).

This particular slide, by the way, was about a $60 project. I paid $50 for the slide (used and via Craigslist), spent about $3 on hardware to mount the slide to the play set (the slide is bolted securely through the heavy plastic of the play set), and spent about $7 on a good shower-style hose head. We already had the old play set and I used an existing hose.

 

[varuscelli]

Our water source for this makeshift pool slide is just a garden hose with a shower-style head attached (and hung from a tree branch).

The cooler water from the hose is great with the pool water temperatures up pretty high in our summer heat. My 7-year-old loves it...and it's too bad I'm a bit too big to give it a go. :?

Truthfully (based on their play habits on the slide) I think the kids like the sprinkled water effect just about as much as they like going down the slide. It cools them off and adds another sensory experience to using the slide. In the very least, the sprinkled water is like icing on the cake for them. I'll probably set up something similar once the "real" slide is up and running.

 

[varuscelli]

Not really being satisfied with the height of the temporary slide, I boosted up the play set and slide a bit using cinder blocks to give the kids a bit more drop-off into the pool.

 

[Titanium]

varuscelli,

Great pictures of your temporary slide!

You might post this same question at the "Boat Restoration and Building" subforum at iboats.com. They will have a lot of good advice on how to restore old fiberglass and gelcoat.
http://forums.iboats.com/forumdisplay.php?f=22

Good luck on your slide restoration project. We want to see the pictures of the "during" and "after" portions of the project.

 

[varuscelli]

Thanks, Titanium, I appreciate the reply and the pointer toward the iboats.com restoration subforum. Posting there sounds like a great idea, and I'll check that out tomorrow.

I definitely plan on doing a bunch of photos as I progress through the little restoration project, and I'll post some of those as I go along. I tend to like doing the photo documentation part of stuff like this, and if I pull it off decently it might make good visual reference material for others with similar project ideas.

And, even if I screw it up, it might serve as a good "what not to do" visual tutorial.

 

[varuscelli]

On the off-chance that I might reach someone helpful at S. R. Smith, I e-mailed them through their site asking if they could recommend a type of paint to use or if they might actually have some kind of paint kit available. Here's the answer I received:

Al

We do not sell paint kits for our slides. The slide you have most likely has a Gel-Cote finish and we would not recommend repainting it.

thanks

Jason Weisenfluh | Director of Sales - West
S.R.Smith | 800.824.4387 x2822 | Direct: 503.266.0282

Hmmm...

Although I do understand that they'd rather have me buy a new slide than attempt a refinish/paint job (which seems to be what the sales guy is implying), that's kind of like telling a boat owner that if their boat needs a paint job, they need to either do nothing or buy a new boat.

Since I'm not really in a "buy new" financial mode right now, I think I'll give it a go on the paint job anyway.

 

[varuscelli]

After doing a bit more thorough cleaning of the slide, it has become more apparent that it has been repainted at least one other time. I have no idea what was used or how long it lasted, but the powdery paint that rubs off the slide is from the secondary paint job. I've done a light pressure washing of the deck, and after cleanup, a lot more of the underlying surfaces has been revealed.

The very light colored paint seems to be a second paint job. The dark blue is the original, and the darker (blackish) area that shows is whatever underlies the original top coat. The secondary paint has held well in places, but has worn through completely or powdered away from nearly half the deck surface.

I might be wrong in what I think I'm seeing, but it's what seems likely to me on closer inspection.

Looks to me like I have quite a bit of sanding to do if I want to get the next coat to adhere properly.

I'm thinking that sanding (and patching) followed by a good marine-type primer and whatever topcoat I choose is the route here. I guess I have plenty of time to think about primer and topcoat while I do the patching and sanding...

 

[varuscelli]

After a bit of sanding with a finishing sander, some of the lower layers are revealed -- some pretty, some not so pretty. But, if I take the paint off where it's not sticking so well and make fixes where they are needed, maybe my paint job will do better than the last one. Or maybe it won't... :|

Not yet sanded:

Partially sanded:

And some sanded areas revealing a lot more of what I couldn't see before, both bad and good -- but that's OK. I want to be able to see what I've really got to work with.

You can really see how worn-through the original paint was (prompting the first paint job, I assume).

 

[Titanium]

varuscelli,

Man, I love the picture essay you are posting here!! Some really great stuff.

Are you sure the first layer of "paint" from the factory is really paint and not gelcoat?

I have not personally used this paint or used the distributor shown in the video, but several people seem to have had great results with painting their boats with Interlux Perfection. The neat thing about this paint is that you don't have to have experience in spray painting. Instead Interlux Perfection can be applied with a paint roller, but the paint still dries to a remarkably high gloss. I think this paint is very expensive - on the order of $53-$63 per quart.

[youtube:1equn5fh]Yp7exyZyikQ[/youtube:1equn5fh]

[youtube:1equn5fh]E7heK-VQhHE[/youtube:1equn5fh]

[youtube:1equn5fh]aSHD-LvmVA8[/youtube:1equn5fh]

[youtube:1equn5fh]bK9Zcm543x0[/youtube:1equn5fh]

[youtube:1equn5fh]sUv9HNiMQuM[/youtube:1equn5fh]

[youtube:1equn5fh]i-cVvbO-NGc[/youtube:1equn5fh]

 

[varuscelli]

Man, I love the picture essay you are posting here!! Some really great stuff.

Thanks, Titanium, for your kind compliment.

Are you sure the first layer of "paint" from the factory is really paint and not gelcoat?

You're right, of course. I should have used the term gelcoat (or gelcote) instead of "paint" when referring to the factory-level coating (the deep blue). I'm pretty sure that is gelcoat, especially given the S. R. Smith sales guy comments.

I have not personally used this paint or used the distributor shown in the video, but several people seem to have had great results with painting their boats with Interlux Perfection. The neat thing about this paint is that you don't have to have experience in spray painting. Instead Interlux Perfection can be applied with a paint roller, but the paint still dries to a remarkably high gloss. I think this paint is very expensive - on the order of $53-$63 per quart.

I'll check out those links, and thanks for those. From my brief looks at some of the boating forums and scanning posts related to painting over gelcoat, Interlux was one of the recurring names I saw (along with a couple of others like Imron and Awlgrip). That Interlux product looks promising...especially since I don't have a sprayer and was looking for something that would allow brush-on, roll-on (or a combination of both) application-wise.

I do believe from what I've seen that it should be possible to do a good job painting over gelcoat with the right techniques and right paint.

 

[varuscelli]

I have not personally used this paint or used the distributor shown in the video, but several people seem to have had great results with painting their boats with Interlux Perfection.

After a fairly thorough review, the Interlux Perfection looks awfully good...and I have a dealer for that stuff right around the corner from me (we live on the Texas Gulf Coast, and there is a boating products retailer on just about every major road in our area).

The only drawback I see to the Interlux Perfection is available colors. I was hoping to match the original blue color of the slide as closely as possible ("marine blue" or whatever it is), and the Interlux Perfection blues are all pretty dark. Awlgrip, for instance, is available in a beautiful marine blue, but I think Awlgrip might be a bit more difficult to work with (maybe). Then again, I could always go for a nice, bright white Interlux Perfection -- which should cut down on surface temperatures on the slide. To me, white seems kind of bland compared to the marine blue, but aside from the color matching strategy, white could be a very good choice overall.

 

[frustratedpoolmom]

varuscelli,

[youtube:1joy6jpo]Yp7exyZyikQ[/youtube:1joy6jpo]

[youtube:1joy6jpo]E7heK-VQhHE[/youtube:1joy6jpo]

[youtube:1joy6jpo]aSHD-LvmVA8[/youtube:1joy6jpo]

[youtube:1joy6jpo]bK9Zcm543x0[/youtube:1joy6jpo]

[youtube:1joy6jpo]sUv9HNiMQuM[/youtube:1joy6jpo]

[youtube:1joy6jpo]i-cVvbO-NGc[/youtube:1joy6jpo]

I was able to fix the links. Not sure why, or why it works this way and not the other? .

 

[varuscelli]

Thanks, frustratedpoolmom and Titanium, for fixing the YouTube links...much easier to refer to now for anyone who wants a look (although I've already added them to my own YouTube favorites for reference).

I've also posted to the iBoats.com forum, as suggested by Titanium (thanks again for that lead/referral).

 

[varuscelli]

For anyone interested in my identification process for this slide, I think I've been able to narrow down its origin, thanks in part to feedback from forum member Cochese in his thread "Post Pics of your Repo Rehab" here:

post-pics-of-your-repo-rehab-t11800.html

I had thought I had an SR Smith Rogue, but it looks like the slide is perhaps a predecessor to that slide and produced by a company that I think later became a part of SR Smith.

The slide seems to be an Aquaslide 'N Dive Queen (there was a "Duke" (three legged) and "Queen" (four legged) version of the slide). It looks like SR Smith might have taken over the Aquaslide company and the Aquaslide 'N Dive Queen evolved into the SR Smith Frontier (or Frontier III) and later evolved into the SR Smith Rogue or Rogue Grand Rapids. Parts kits seem to be available for these slides with a lot of crossover in references to them, with parts ads referring variously to these slides as the Queen, the Duke, the Frontier III and the Rogue. The older the version of the slide, though (like the one I have) the less likely someone like me is to be able to find any complete assortment of parts. And, it's not clear whether the parts for the current SR Smith Rogue will fit the older Aquaslide 'N Dive Queen. I know the water delivery system is different, so the fittings for the water are not the same. However, I do see older water kits that seem like they might be the right ones for the old slide...but it's hard to say.

In any case, I will likely be making my own hardware for the slide. I've already got the legs planned out, and they will be made from 1-5/8" hurricane fence posts and associated deck mount flanges (aluminum). Hurricane fence posts can be easily cut to length and mounted to a deck via the appropriate concrete mounts. That combination of legs and mounts will be an almost perfect fit for this slide and will cost me only about one-fifth of what new slide-specific legs and mounts would cost.

However, the ladder, rails, and water system will be a different story.

I'm almost of a mind to build a ladder something like the one shown in this photo and either mount it in the grass next to the pool (as this one is) or build it as a free-standing ladder (not sunk into the ground) that sits on top of the pool deck/surround. This one does look kind of neat and something similar to it would be very easy -- and inexpensive -- to build.

 

[wetwillie]

Hey Varuscelli...
I just found your posts and am almost certain I've just picked up your slide (no hardware, but the fiberglas is in very good shape. I'll be refinishing it shortly, but am curious if you've had any success on finding or creating the water hardware (specifically what are you using for the nozzles?)?

Any luck?
thx

 

[Panther]

Hey all-
I am also refinishing our slide in about a week. I will post before and after pictures. Right now I am leaning toward the Interlux perfection. This topic has been really enlightening! Thanks for the pictures and videos.