Expectations for Inground Vinyl Liner Replacement w/Sand Bottom

[prdaley]

Hi all,

I've been sleuthing a bit since we acquired a house with a pool two years ago and this is my first post. Our liner was on borrowed time when we bought the house two years ago and this April it gave up the ghost. I've already contracted with a local outfit to replace the liner and it's happening in two days on Wednesday.

The old liner had started pulling away from the wall a bit after the tear developed and has been flapping in the breeze since the middle of April. Our plastic pool coping needed some TLC so I decided to remove the liner all the way as it was in my way for the painting I was going to do with the coping.

I've got plastic side walls with what looks to be a sand bottom. It's a 16x32 with a deep end.

Is it a realistic expectation that the installer of the new liner should retrowel and smooth up the sand as part of the install or should I expect this to be extra?

After they came out to look at the pool this is what they wrote up. Unfortunately we've already paid 2/3 of it so I don't think there's any going back now.

Liner & Installation: $3,290.00
20mil liner
16 x 31 + safety ledge
Install of new liner
Disposal of old liner
New skimmer gaskets, faceplaces, return gaskets & faceplates.

 

[Divin Dave]

Hi prdaley,
Welcome to TFP!

To be honest, whether or not they will charge extra is a toss of the coin. There is no 'standard'. Best to just ask them about it.

Vinyl pools have either sand bottoms or vermiculite bottoms. They may not have even taken into consideration which type it is when bidding the install.


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- - - Updated - - -

Hi prdaley,
Welcome to TFP!

To be honest, whether or not they will charge extra is a toss of the coin. There is no 'standard' in the pool biz. It's mind bogglingl, but that's the way it is. Best to just ask them about it.

Vinyl pools have either sand bottoms or vermiculite bottoms. They may not have even taken into consideration which type it is when bidding the install.


.

 

[prdaley]

Hi Dave,

Thanks for the reply. When you say "They may not have even taken into consideration which type it is when bidding the install" do you mean that from the installer's perspective it doesn't really matter and they'll just work around whatever is there?

I'm just hoping to avoid a situation of "Oh you don't want lumpy sand under your liner that's $1500 extra, please." But to your point maybe there is no normal here.....

 

[MitchRyan912]

Who'd you go with? We've got New Wave Pools coming out to do ours next week. I believe it was $3400 for the 27 mil option, and that was a $200 upgrade from the 20 mil version. I don't know, but I think that they are going to fix up the sand on the bottom of our pool. It's got some noticeable grooves on the bottom when it gets dirty.

 

[Busterdan1]

The best price I was quoted to do my 16x32 liner was $5500 with no repairs. I chose to do it myself. My pool was built in 1999 and was in pretty bad shape when i removed the liner. The vermiculite around the walls at shallow end had turned to oatmeal like muck. One of the walls on the deep end was like pressed sand on the beach. you could carve your name in it will little effort. If you have a hopper deep end the side walls I think would be vermiculite. the sand can only be on the flat surfaces. The plastic walls indicate a newer pool ( i think) . I had to install dewatering pump to lower the ground water level around the pool to allow for repairs to be made. I dug a hole in the deep end bigger than a five gallon bucket and put in gravel and a bucket with holes drilled around the bottom and put a small pump in for three days to dry out the deep end so repairs could be made. I used deck mudd for the shallow end repairs. And vermiculite (2/3 parts portland cement and 1 part vermiculite) at the deep end. Any rough spots i ground off with a cut off wheel grinder. I removed all vermiculite that was not hard like concrete. I bought two 3 hp vacs from ebay. ( 300 each). Could have used one but two was a big plus at pulling the liner in place. the liner was the easy part. 3 people it was in and full in 2 hours. Thats no a bad price to do the liner. I would have paid that if I found a reputable company to do it at that price. From what i read not to many people use sand bottom installs anymore. They will have to smooth it out.

 

[MitchRyan912]

PB is here now, and they're resurfacing/smoothing the sand. There must have been a leak where water got under the old liner, as there was a layer of what looked like felt underneath the liner. They said it was algae of some sort.