- Originally built/installed 1988
- Made by Hallmark
- 18,000 gallons
- 3 foot shallow end, 6.5 foot deep end
- Approximately 36x18 feet
- 300 square feet of fiberglass, ~700 square feet of gunite
A little backstory:
We purchased this home in 2022, partly due to the great back yard and pool. Pools aren't usually a big selling point here in the Pacific Northwest (Seattle area), but it was for my wife and me. My wife's aunt had a pool when she was a kid and she has a lot of fond memories of spending summer days there. My best friend growing up had a pool, so I also share my wife's nostalgia for spending summers playing in a pool. We have two young boys, so we hope to pass on that love of the water to them as well.
The first summer I spent a lot of time and money trying to wrap my head around understanding the basic maintenance and chemistry side of pool ownership. Despite my best efforts, I was always fighting water clarity issues. The pool always looked like someone had poured a couple gallons of milk into the water no matter how much I ran the filter or how dialed my chemicals were. It finally dawned on me that the issue wasn't the chems, it was the paint chalking. The particles were so small they were just going right through my sand filter. It was then I knew I was going to have to do something to fix this. As an interim solution, I started adding cellulose powder to the sand filter and it made a huge improvement in filter performance, I'll definitely keep doing this moving forward.
The previous owners of the house bought it in 2006 and pretty much did nothing to the pool besides the standard maintenance and upkeep. The only exception was they drained the pool in 2016 and painted the gunite portion with a DIY pool paint of some sort. Fast forward to 2025 and that pool paint (what's left of it) is 9 years old. The fiberglass sides have never been painted luckily. As far as I can tell, this pool has never been resurfaced since it was installed, it's just been patched a few times when the plaster flaked and painted many times.
In 2023 I refreshed the mechanicals because the pump was from sometime around 1999 and I wanted to replace it before I HAD to replace it, plus I wanted a more efficient variable speed pump (Pentair Superflo VST 1.5hp). I knew the sand in the filter hadn't been replaced since at least 2006 so I changed that out as well. Since I had it all apart I installed new laterals and a combo valve too. I also redid a bunch of the piping while I was at it. The heater is a Jandy LXi 250 that runs on propane.
For those with hybrid pools, you know it's a major challenge to find a competent company to restore your pool. Here in the Seattle area it's even more difficult because pools aren't a popular home feature, so we have a limited selection of contractors for pool building and restoration. Due to that scarcity, there isn't a lot of competition so prices to have anything done are easily double or triple the amount you'd expect to pay in areas where pools are more popular. Throw in the added complexity of a hybrid pool and it's even worse.
This project started by me getting several quotes from area pool companies. I was getting $20k+ quotes for JUST replastering the gunite, and no one wanted to touch the fiberglass portion.
I finally found a company that would do the whole pool. They utilized a fiber-reinforced epoxy of some sort to coat the entire pool. I'm pretty sure it was something very similar to the process used in this thread:
Need Refurbish Hybrid Pool Help
Of course, they were the highest bid at $30k, but that did not include the labor to repair the osmotic blisters in the walls.
At this point, I decided that if I want this done the way I want I'm just going to have to do it myself. I would consider myself someone with DIY capabilities well above the average person so I don't have a lot of concerns about being able to complete the work myself (I have taken on many similarly complicated projects in the past). I do have some worries about being able to get the work done quickly enough to actually get to enjoy the pool during the short period of time we get summer here in Seattle, but we'll worry about that later.
The first step, of course, is draining the pool. My pump can move some serious water and it was empty in under 5 hours.
Here is the general breakdown of the work I'll be doing:
1. Drain pool (done!)
2. Repair osmotic blisters
3. Remove old paint/epoxy and loose plaster
4. Patch/smooth out gunite as needed, repair cracks if any found
5. Industrial epoxy coating (not a consumer grade product)
6. Industrial epoxy top coat (UV stable, also not a consumer grade product)
7. Retile waterline
8. Fill and enjoy for many years
I'll be documenting the whole process and sharing details as I go along. I'm doing this in a way and using products that I'm pretty sure hasn't been done before (or at least that I could find any evidence of on the internet or talking to technical support for the products I'll be utilizing), so this whole thing will be a bit of an experiment.
If I'm successful, this could be a promising new way for hybrid pool owners to revive their pools. If it doesn't work, I'll be out a few thousand dollars and will just have to pay to have the pros do it.
www.troublefreepool.com