Problem with Pool Liner

[griffey]

Hi Folks.

I think I may have made a very serious mistake with my pool.

Last year the liner started to separate from the wall bead (or whatever it is called) in one of the corners. At the end of the season I drained to water all the way down so that the entire shallow half of the pool was dry. I thought with the water out I would be able to pull the liner up and get that corner back in. I was unsuccessful in that attempt.

However, in draining the water so low I created myself an even bigger problem--now the liner is all sorts of out of whack. Not only has it pulled out much farther in that one corner, but it has pulled itself out from the corners where the walls meet bottom, and the corners were walls meet each other. There are stretch marks all over the place and the liner has pulled down and left a gap underneath the skimmer hole.

Help! Is there any way I can recover from this? Should I drain the entire pool and pull the liner out of the bead all the way around and essentially start from scratch? The liner is about 10 years old (I think) which if I understand correctly is about halfway through its lifetime. Do I need to buy a new liner?

I took some photos this morning. One shows the liner separating from the bottom of the skimmer, and the next (I think) shows where the liner has pulled away from the original problematic corner. The rest show the stretching, etc.

http://www.nerdrium.com/pool

If anyone has *any* suggestions I'd love to hear them. I'm in a bit of a panic right now because I just replaced the pool pump and don't really have a few grand laying around to replace the pool liner at this point.

Thanks in advance for any help!

G.--

 

[JasonLion]

Welcome to TFP!

Draining like that is never a good idea with a vinyl liner. You always want to keep at least say one foot of water in the shallow end so the liner doesn't contract and move out of position. You are lucky the liner didn't tear as you filled the pool back up.

Getting that completely fixed will probably need to wait until you get a new liner. You should be able to get the liner back into it's track by waiting for a very warm sunny day and stretching it back into place. Likewise you should be able to get some of the wrinkles out by using something like a toilet plunger to "drag" the liner into place. But getting everything back in to place is probably impossible. As long as the liner hasn't torn you should still be able to use the pool, it just won't look as good as it otherwise might.

 

[griffey]

Thanks so much for your reply.

Part of the problem is that I haven't filled the pool back up--when the liner started stretching and contracting last fall I sort of assumed it would work itself back into place as it filled back up, but that wasn't happening so I quit filling it yesterday.

Anything I can do about the gap under the skimmer hole? Should I try to take those screws out and see if that can be pulled back up?

This is so frustrating.

Thanks again for your reply!

G.--

 

[griffey]

What's a new liner going to cost me if I get it from somewhere like In The Swim? Nobody really lists prices on-line and I'm guessing that's because with all sorts of different sizes and shapes there's no way to set a fixed priced without a lot of the details in place. I suppose I can fill out their form and call them...

 

[JasonLion]

The liner alone, without install, should be somewhere around $800 to $1,200, depending on where you get it. With install it would be more like $3k to $5k.

I'm not really a liner expert, perhaps someone like waste will stop by and comment.

 

[griffey]

Thanks, Jason. Pool is draining now and we'll take measurements this afternoon.

Just another one of those things, I guess. Live and learn.

Thanks again!

G.--

 

[waste]

Welcome to TFP!!

Jasonlion was kind enough to PM me to look at your post - I just got home from work.

You might be able to salvage that liner. You'll need to get the liner back in the track first, if you can't do that with the pool empty on a warm and sunny day - it's unlikely that you'll be able to salvage the liner (see this post for some tips) You'll have to 'reset' the liner, I'll tell you about that if you can get the liner tucked back in).

If you want to try resetting the liner, let me know and I'll help you as best I can. (you may want to consider calling a reliable liner pool company to see if they can get the liner back in and reset, for a reasonable price )



EDIT: forgot to add hyperlink

 

[bob22]

I'm curious if you see water behind the liner (the ground side of the line; not the pool water side) where it has popped out of the bead track?

 

[jasonknox]

If you are able to reuse the liner there is a product that you can install in the track that is supposed to lock the liner bead in place so that it will not pop out of the track. I bought some when I built my pool but did not install it and fortunately my liner has not popped out of the track.

 

[griffey]

Thank you so much for all of the replies!

I do not think there is water behind the liner, but I'll check to make sure.

This weekend (if it isn't raining) I'll drain that last foot of water from the shallow end again and see if I can't get that corner back in.

At this point, I've resigned to buying a new liner. So with nothing to lose, if I rip or otherwise make the liner worse, it won't be that big of a deal. I'll probably attempt the blow dryer method of loosening the liner because right now it is quite rigid.

As far as locking it in the track, in the couple of spots where we have trouble keeping the lip in the track we have in the past jammed pennies between the top of the bent-over liner and the lip of the pool above it, and that has worked well. Well, until that big corner part came out last year I guess.

Thanks again for the help--I'll post back when I've had a chance to lower the water level (hey, at least I can finally use my new pump that I just installed!) and see what I can figure out.

G.--

 

[griffey]

@bob22 -- No water behind the liner. Very, very small amount of water that I can honestly attribute to whatever rainfall might have fallen into that gap, but no, the pool water is not leaking through the liner (and when I started to fill it and stopped the other day it rested with just the top of the metal part of the pool light showing and we've held steady at that level for the past several days.).

Still planning on emptying the water back off the shallow end and busting out the hair dryer.

 

[griffey]

Thanks again for all the input, folks.

I drained the water out of the shallow end and was unable to reattach the liner to the bead on the side of the pool.

We have re-covered the pool, are going to take a year off, and I'll save up to buy a new liner for next year. We'll probably use the tax return to pay someone to put it in as well--the last thing I need to do is cut a hole for a jet in the wrong place and have wasted a thousand dollars.

In-ground pools are for rich people, and I'm not rich. Sigh.

Thanks again.

G.--

 

[waste]

Sorry to hear that you won't have use of the pool this year

I had hoped we'd be able to get you up and swimming but, if you can't get the liner back in with an ~empty pool, using the tricks I linked - you'll need a new liner

I certainly understand not having the finances available this year!

You can still do a little research here on pool ownership/ care so that you'll be all set next year to care for your pool properly.

 

[nilonicss]

i have a problem with bead lock keep popping out and the liner popping out of the track. can i use some kind of silicon to secure the bead lock so it will not pop out of the track.