Gratuitous Pool Construction Pics

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jamjam said:
I was out there trying to pick clumps of grass out
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Same. When they started the excavation I was standing right there watching... scraped off topsoil went in one pile, good dirt in another, large rocks in a third. My mistake was leaving and going to work because when I got back it was all just one indistinguishable pile. Going with this PB was one of the worst decisions of my life.
 
they never did a scrape - i was surprised and for some reason didn't speak up. I did say, "hey should we collect the top soil?" and the answer was "nah you are gonna have to bring in so much top sold anyway." Should have been more assertive, but i was mentally exhausted dealing with everything.
 
I’m sure there are builders and subs out there that care, but sadly most don’t. Putting the yard back together and/or how much settling you experience is a long after they are gone problem. Everybody figures it out, but way too late.

It would take mere minutes to scrape up a lawn/topsoil pile. Especially when they have open access and use a big backhoe. It’s a total lack of pride in their work.
 
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Wow that's bad after a year, did they overdig the floor and fill back in? You rarely get erosion under a liner unless there is a major leak. Divots are either organic material that decays, or fluffed up fill that settles. To fix that your gonna need a new liner, that one will be shot it has to be fully removed to fix that. I would actually wait another year or 2 to be sure nothing else starts sinking.
 
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Newdude said:
I’m sure there are builders and subs out there that care, but sadly most don’t. Putting the yard back together and/or how much settling you experience is a long after they are gone problem. Everybody figures it out, but way too late.

It would take mere minutes to scrape up a lawn/topsoil pile. Especially when they have open access and use a big backhoe. It’s a total lack of pride in their work.
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Had a new cesspool put in 2 years ago. The guys scraped, did segregated piles and replaced the sprinkler pipes they busted. They brought in a power sweeper to clean my street. They went 30’ down to hit sand and back filled, compacted, back filled and compacted. They then put the top soil back and even hand raked out the rocks. Hasn’t settled an inch. Those guys putting in a literal sh*thole took extreme pride in the work. Never saw such skilled excavator work.
 
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Septic guys are usually great operators, that's how I learned to run an excavator. 90% of excavators out there cant dig a pool, and if they do they screw it up. Theres alot of money grabbers in all trades these days, pride is held by few, and usually the old schoolers
 
jimmythegreek said:
did they overdig the floor and fill back in?
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I wasn't here at that point of excavation, so I'm honestly not sure. What is strange is that this is only along half the deep end. The other half is fine... straight and smooth as the day it was laid.

Your point about waiting a year or two before repairing this makes sense. My only concern is that it may have a failure before then and cause more of an issue. My assumption is that if this continues to get worse, it indicates something funky (highly technical term) going on in the ground around that portion of the pool. I'm beginning to think my best option is to pull the liner and have, at the very least, that section dug out and formed with concrete. Now or later, I'm not sure I see a difference... except if it is done now there will not be a patio in the way.
 
Regardless your gonna lose the liner. If done now amd not fully remedied you can have further sinking down the road. I would do it sooner of it was me, but you need to be sure the root of it and that its repaired right. You literally gotta be there watching the repair the whole time
 
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So, my PB is actually going to fix this on his own dime! I take back everything bad I've ever said about him.

Sometime within the next two weeks (schedules are nuts) they are going to pick a nice, hot and sunny day to drain the pool. At that point, he is going to go under the liner and fill any large voids with concrete. He is also going to poke/prod/tamp the areas to find any spots that appear to want to sink beyond where they are now and fill those with concrete. He is then going to re-surface the whole area with fresh vermiculite then reattach the liner and refill the pool.

My only beef there is that I've got to recondition the water again. Ugh. Anyone else notice the price of chemicals going up? I kind of wish I could get an empty tanker truck to pump my water into so I can put it back in later.

Anyway, his opinion is that rain water is running down the outside of the pool walls and finding some void (likely from organic material) that was just outside the original dig area. Assuming we get it patched and the deck installed shortly after (which it should be) then he believes the issue will not reappear.

I'm inclined to agree with him on root cause, but I'm 50/50 on reappearing. The deck may stop this, but if the water is actually coming from somewhere else and traveling horizontally under the ground, then it won't. The odds are better if he does a really good job packing existing holes with concrete.

I'm also 50/50 on the liner being a lost cause at this point. It is less than a year old and still has plenty of stretch to it. The question will be how well it "bounces back" from the existing pock marks.

I'll be sure I'm here when the work is done... partly to watch the process but also because I'm dying to get some pictures of what it looks like behind the liner. I'll post updates when the repairs happen.
 
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GaryParr said:
So, my PB is actually going to fix this on his own dime! I take back everything bad I've ever said about him.

Sometime within the next two weeks (schedules are nuts) they are going to pick a nice, hot and sunny day to drain the pool. At that point, he is going to go under the liner and fill any large voids with concrete. He is also going to poke/prod/tamp the areas to find any spots that appear to want to sink beyond where they are now and fill those with concrete. He is then going to re-surface the whole area with fresh vermiculite then reattach the liner and refill the pool.

My only beef there is that I've got to recondition the water again. Ugh. Anyone else notice the price of chemicals going up? I kind of wish I could get an empty tanker truck to pump my water into so I can put it back in later.

Anyway, his opinion is that rain water is running down the outside of the pool walls and finding some void (likely from organic material) that was just outside the original dig area. Assuming we get it patched and the deck installed shortly after (which it should be) then he believes the issue will not reappear.

I'm inclined to agree with him on root cause, but I'm 50/50 on reappearing. The deck may stop this, but if the water is actually coming from somewhere else and traveling horizontally under the ground, then it won't. The odds are better if he does a really good job packing existing holes with concrete.

I'm also 50/50 on the liner being a lost cause at this point. It is less than a year old and still has plenty of stretch to it. The question will be how well it "bounces back" from the existing pock marks.

I'll be sure I'm here when the work is done... partly to watch the process but also because I'm dying to get some pictures of what it looks like behind the liner. I'll post updates when the repairs happen.
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That it great...now you can pour the deck before the liner is set too.
 
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So, I'm a victim of my own dumb decisions and a touch of bad luck.

Since I have to drain my pool this coming week to have the moonscape repaired, I made the following seemingly reasonable decisions.
  1. Not been worrying about adding water to fight evaporation.
  2. Not monitored the balance as closely
These alone would have been fine except at some point in the past couple days, the SWG was turned off.

So, now I'm faced with a decision on how do deal with my light green water.

I don't see a reason to get it back to crystal clear because it's all getting dumped to waste in a few days. However, I want to kill the algae so it doesn't come back when I add the new water.

I shocked the pool with liquid chlorine yesterday and plan to keep the level high for a few days. I also back flushed the DE filter today so it would have an easier time filtering everything out. But, because the water level is low I could only backflush briefly before the skimmers started sucking air. It ran pretty clear though so I think I'm good there.

But, now the question for the FTP hive mind.

Am I correct in my assumption that I really only need to make sure the algae is dead before I drain? I'm thinking I can just keep the chlorine level high and then scrub the Crud out of the walls/floor right before I drain so everything just goes out to waste.

OR... to really keep it from coming back when I get new water, should I aim for crystal clear before I drain? Seems like such a waste of time and chemicals. And, to get a good back-flush on the DE to really clean it out I'll need to add a few inches of water which also just feels like a total waste.

Thanks!
 
I hadn't realized until the ground was being prepared for the paver base just how high the pool was sitting. We could have saved ourselves a whole lot of material costs had it been put in a foot or so lower. If only there had been, oh, I don't know.... a professional pool installer around when this pool was being installed who had the experience to help us avoid this issue.
 
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