Have you ever painted your plaster pool by yourself? Any advice?

[Gary Davis]

Due to life-threatening issues which took quite some time to heal, the pool went fallow since early summer of 2023 until we drained it just yesterday with a new1.6HP dirty water pump and we cleaned it out and will soon refill it (which takes about a month with a garden hose on a well)....

But then I noticed maybe I should have thought ahead and painted the plaster?
Dunno.

I probably don't have time (given I'm still on a walker) but I figured I'd do some homework at the very least.

Anyone ever paint their own plaster pool?
Any suggestions?

 

[PoolStored]

Pool paints now seem to last 2-3 years due to EPA regulations affecting their formulations. After 2-3 years it needs to be sand blasted off, and repainted. Some folks report chalking of paint within a year.

We don't recommend painting pools.

 

[TinFoilHat]

You can get it acid washed.

 

[Gary Davis]

Thanks for the suggestions, where I DIY everything - which - by the way - is why I like TFP with respect to pool chemistry.
However, when I DIY a pool - I am not expecting perfection any more than when I bake a cake I don't expect perfection.

It just has to protect the plaster (if that's what paint does).
Or, if paint is only there to look good - then it just has to look less bad than it does now.

I don't have high expectations; but I'm not sure what the purpose of paint is in the first place.
a. Is it to protect the plaster?
b. Or is it just to look nice?

To be clear, I've never painted a pool before - but I have a 20-gallon 220VAC compressor & paint brushes.

As for the kind suggestions, I've done a 1:3 acid:water wash once, long ago, and I've lightly sanded the entire pool also, a few years ago.
In comparison to those two common DY tasks, painting should be easy (whether by compressor spray or by old-style paint brush).

I saw the advice of "We don't recommend painting pools"; but I'm not quite sure why.
Is it that EPA-approved paint doesn't last more than 3 years?
(I'm not worried about chalking - nor do I care about looks - I'm just trying to protect the plaster.)

Does paint not protect the plaster?

 

[Newdude]

saw the advice of "We don't recommend painting pools"; but I'm not quite sure why.
Is it that EPA-approved paint doesn't last more than 3 years?

Correct. Here's a more detailed post about it

Whole Procedure to paint the pool

hi , unfortunately my pool had water sitting passed almost to year ,filled with neighbors tree leaves shred in it,the water become dark green or black .I drain and clean the pool but the walls and floor uptill the water sitting become greish.Need help how to get rid of that and if I'm painting...

www.troublefreepool.com

YMMV of course, but many get cloudy water with the paint coming off in the first year. 3 years would be exceptional by today's standards.

 

[kimkats]

Paint does nothing to protect the plaster. It is really just of over all appearance. Once it starts coming off and clouding up the water you will be worse off than you are now

 

[1poolman1]

Thanks for the suggestions, where I DIY everything - which - by the way - is why I like TFP with respect to pool chemistry.
However, when I DIY a pool - I am not expecting perfection any more than when I bake a cake I don't expect perfection.

It just has to protect the plaster (if that's what paint does).
Or, if paint is only there to look good - then it just has to look less bad than it does now.

I don't have high expectations; but I'm not sure what the purpose of paint is in the first place.
a. Is it to protect the plaster?
b. Or is it just to look nice?

To be clear, I've never painted a pool before - but I have a 20-gallon 220VAC compressor & paint brushes.

As for the kind suggestions, I've done an acid wash once, long ago, and I've lightly sanded the entire pool also, a few years ago.
In comparison to those two common DY tasks, painting should be easy (whether by compressor spray or by old-style paint brush).

I saw the advice of "We don't recommend painting pools"; but I'm not quite sure why.
Is it that EPA-approved paint doesn't last more than 3 years?
(I'm not worried about chalking - nor do I care about looks - I'm just trying to protect the plaster.)

Does paint not protect the plaster?

All you would be doing is painting over all the deposits on the pool plaster. Look at the light. The walls are the same. An acid wash is your best choice. If you really want to protect the plaster, get some water in the pool now before it starts to fall off.

 

[Gary Davis]

I appreciate all the good advice, and the paint-thread reference and the clarification of why the pool paint exists as a thing, and that it won't last long, and that it might even make some things worse. This is all GREAT information, as that means, for sure, I'm not gonna even think further of painting the pool (as I don't really care what it looks like).

As for getting water into the pool, that will be started tomorrow - as I had pumped it out a couple days ago and then I brushed the sides as much as I had the strength to do.

I ordered a few 10-pound bags of CYA and 50-pound bags of calcium salt which are scheduled to arrive tomorrow (as I know the well water chemistry is about 135ppm).
I have seemingly almost infinite sunlight so I'll keep the CYA in the higher range most likely around 30ppm or so - and I never use tablets or powdered shocks; so it should stay wherever I put it (excepting for evaporation - as there is no rain until the California monsoon season).

I'll take a trip to the local HASA supply house to get a few cases of liquid chlorine & hydrochloric acid as it takes a while to balance (as it takes far more acid to balance, even when done super slowly, than I'd like given HCl is not only expensive but acid doesn't directly help with sanitation).

Unfortunately, in my ignorance, I had experimented with borate with the prior fill - so all the water had to go; but it's easy to fill in terms of garden-hose effort - although it will take about a month (or even two), elapsed time - since the well water sporadic flow rate is limited in volume to somewhere between five hundred to a thousand (at most) gallons per day (these flow rates fluctuate year to year so they're only rough estimates).

Much appreciated the kind & helpful advice. I love advice which enables me to make a clear decision that I don't need to worry about afterward.

 

[Gary Davis]

UPDATE: Thanks for the advice as I'm no longer worried about the paint.

Reading the referenced thread, I had my wife pour the 50% chlorine wash along all pool surfaces this morning at daylight (I can't bend my body yet) and we started filling up the pool (which will take over a month elapsed time due to the vagaries of well-water flow rates).

I still have CaCl, Hasa acid and chlorine and about 30 pounds of CYA ready at least for the initial fill (where my well water takes a long time to balance due to very high carbonate alkalinity and medium-low calcium - everything else being nearly perfect).

Much appreciated the kind and timely advice.

 

[kimkats]

Is there any way to truck in water? A month is a long time for a plaster pool to be without water. If not one thing you can do it set up a sprinkler to add the water so it hits the walls of the pool to try to hydrate them a bit.

 

[Gary Davis]

Is there any way to truck in water? A month is a long time for a plaster pool to be without water. If not one thing you can do it set up a sprinkler to add the water so it hits the walls of the pool to try to hydrate them a bit.

Understood. Thanks for the suggestions. I appreciate your kind concern.

I'm trying to keep costs down, where water only costs me the electricity to pump it out of the ground with a well pump and to pressurize it with a water pressure booster pump. I would need multiple loads of 5K gallons which I have no idea how much that would cost nor how long it would take (I hear the water companies are like roofers - you get a return call, if you're lucky, in a month).

Anyone ever get water trucked in who knows the price and terms (in terms of how long they take to arrive)?
I do not.

I could set up a sprinkler but I have infinite sunlight so it would dry in seconds.

 

[Bill1974]

Check to see if a donation to your local fire department could help you out with a few water deliveries. Doesn't hurt to ask.

 

[Newdude]

Doesn't hurt to ask.

It might. Fire departments have no need to clean the inside of their tankers. And if they don't flush the hydrant first it'll likely have a high iron content.

But most wont do it anymore because the department lawyer won't let them. They don't rescue kittens anymore either.

 

[Gary Davis]

Thanks for the helpful advice, which I appreciate. Both those (opposing) suggestions above are good ideas for most people, especially those who don't have the patience to fill a pool for 80 hours at 8 gallons a minute, intermittently spread out over a few weeks (as the fill rate is mostly limited by the recharge rate of the well pump 400 feet into the ground).

I've already got 15 hours x 8 gallons per minute which is roughly about 7,000 gallons in the pool after only three days where I'm limiting the input to a single garden hose to minimize the impact on the well pump and on the water pressure booster pump as it's over 100 degrees ambient so those above-ground pumps need to not be overheated.

If I average five hours a day, that's about 2,500 gallons a day - which - in the past drought years would have been unthinkable - but those atmospheric rivers that inundated us last monsoon season seem to have pushed enough water into the ground to sustain that excellent flow rate this year.

As an aside, I personally hate wasting the earth's resources where some people might think it wasteful to dump a (muddy) pool into the ground, but it actually doesn't waste any water (as I understand it) since I dumped the pool water directly above the 400-foot deep well. I'm sure it spreads out, and I'm sure it moves slowly via gravity and capillary action (probably at the rate of a foot or two a year); but at least all that muddy water went into the ground (although I'm sure some evaporated into the atmosphere in this high 100-degree heat wave).

 

[Gary Davis]

UPDATE:
Woo hoo! After six days of filling with a single garden hose (30 hours, at 8 gallons per minute, so as not to overstress the well pump and water pressure booster pump), it's halfway filled! There is more water in the ground this year (after those atmospheric rivers last winter) than I had estimated there might be.

But I've noticed that at first it took about five hours to replace the water in the storage tanks for every hour put into the pool, but now, it's taking about 10 hours to replace the stored water for every hour of water pumped into the pool, so it's a decreasing exponential curve.

 

[Gary Davis]

UPDATE:
I lot of time people don't have the courtesy to update threads as they progress so I want to keep the people who helped me updated on the current progresss....

Thanks again for letting me know to not bother even thinking about painting the plaster where it has been about two weeks and roughly about 50 hours at about 8 gallons a minute to fill the pool with well water at about 1000 to 2000 gallons per day (which is all the well can handle). Outside temperatures are in the high 90's all day (pool water is in the low 70s) with lots of sunlight but I've been keeping the water sanitized and balanced without using the equipment - which won't work anyway until the skimmers can be reached - where I only have about a foot left to go before I can use the skimmers (which is roughly one more week at about 2000 gallons per day, give or take).

 

[Gary Davis]

Woo hoo! It took almost a month at roughly an hour or two a day at roughly 70 hours at about 8 gallons per minute of well water to fill the pool to the tile line (where I'm keeping the water level at the tile line until I'm done spritzing the tile with diluted muriatic acid to dissolve the scale without damaging the pool surface).

The pool equipment hasn't been started as the skimmers don't have the requisite water level yet (plus, I have to retrofit the skimmer weir doors); but when I'm done with the tile, then I can raise the water level the last couple of inches to start the pumps after almost a month since starting this pool-filling operation.