Hello all,
I just joined and posted my introduction in the sub forum, can't thank this site enough already. My wife and I bought a house 2 years ago that we love with a very old inground vinyl pool. When we bought it we knew that the liner was close to the end of its life but we were trying to stretch it until next year to do a larger backyard remodel. Well when I pulled the cover last week that idea was shot down very quickly. No water in the shallow end and minimal in the deep end. The concrete deck was in bad shape before but some additional settling around the stairs caused a fracture in the stairs themselves. And it appears there's a leak somewhere in the main bottom drain. Long story short we are going to essentially start over. The pool was originally built in 1979 with a polymer pool wall/integrated coping with the concrete poured into the polymer coping. While the walls have not failed, the concrete connected to the coping is badly out of level (sloping away somewhat properly but uneven and unsafe tripping hazards) and the coping is in terrible shape. Also much of the original piping has been abandoned with only 1 return jet that is a patch of new PVC and original black poly. The pool is 17x34 oval with an extremely brief shallow end.
Since my wife and I would much prefer a more relaxed pool with benches and shallow spaces our plan is to insert a fiberglass shell into the existing hole. We are looking at a Latham Claremont. With the existing steps removed I will only need to demo 1- 1/2 sections of the last pool walls next to the stairs. I will break up the concrete and fill in the voids behind the existing pool walls with gravel. I am going to be mostly DIY'ing this install. I work in construction and have 2 close friends in excavating that will helping me along the way/loaning me equipment. My big question is what material to raise the existing pool floor to prep for the new fiberglass shell. The manufacture specs 1b (1/2" clean) for base and backfill but that's in the situation that its a fresh dig and only a couple inches of base stone. I need to raise the deepest part of my exisitng almost 3'. I already have the sump tube and will be installing at the grade level now so I'm not worried about ground water but I am worried about stacking clean 1b that deep. My excavator buds think I should use crusher run or stone dust compacted well every few inches and then let settle and rained on a for a few weeks before I get to within the dig specs and use 1b stone to hit the mark. I know this type of situation has happened before but I haven't found any best cases on raising the existing hole this much. Thanks so much.
Dan
I just joined and posted my introduction in the sub forum, can't thank this site enough already. My wife and I bought a house 2 years ago that we love with a very old inground vinyl pool. When we bought it we knew that the liner was close to the end of its life but we were trying to stretch it until next year to do a larger backyard remodel. Well when I pulled the cover last week that idea was shot down very quickly. No water in the shallow end and minimal in the deep end. The concrete deck was in bad shape before but some additional settling around the stairs caused a fracture in the stairs themselves. And it appears there's a leak somewhere in the main bottom drain. Long story short we are going to essentially start over. The pool was originally built in 1979 with a polymer pool wall/integrated coping with the concrete poured into the polymer coping. While the walls have not failed, the concrete connected to the coping is badly out of level (sloping away somewhat properly but uneven and unsafe tripping hazards) and the coping is in terrible shape. Also much of the original piping has been abandoned with only 1 return jet that is a patch of new PVC and original black poly. The pool is 17x34 oval with an extremely brief shallow end.
Since my wife and I would much prefer a more relaxed pool with benches and shallow spaces our plan is to insert a fiberglass shell into the existing hole. We are looking at a Latham Claremont. With the existing steps removed I will only need to demo 1- 1/2 sections of the last pool walls next to the stairs. I will break up the concrete and fill in the voids behind the existing pool walls with gravel. I am going to be mostly DIY'ing this install. I work in construction and have 2 close friends in excavating that will helping me along the way/loaning me equipment. My big question is what material to raise the existing pool floor to prep for the new fiberglass shell. The manufacture specs 1b (1/2" clean) for base and backfill but that's in the situation that its a fresh dig and only a couple inches of base stone. I need to raise the deepest part of my exisitng almost 3'. I already have the sump tube and will be installing at the grade level now so I'm not worried about ground water but I am worried about stacking clean 1b that deep. My excavator buds think I should use crusher run or stone dust compacted well every few inches and then let settle and rained on a for a few weeks before I get to within the dig specs and use 1b stone to hit the mark. I know this type of situation has happened before but I haven't found any best cases on raising the existing hole this much. Thanks so much.
Dan
