fiberglass vs polyethylene pool slides

[vealessi]

Hi,

I am adding a 26' slide to my pool and looking at several companies that custom build. One keep difference that I found is the material used - most are fiberglass but one is polyethylene, which is more expensive, and claims to only need 5 gallons of water per minute, whereas fiberglass needs 150-200 GPM - seems like a huge difference; am I comparing apples-to-apples? What are the advantages / disadvantages of each material, and which do people recommend for a pool slide?

Thanks, Vic

 

[AftonJeeper]

The gallons per minute seems to be off too me. I cannot quite understand why you would need close to 200 GPM for a slide.

Hopefully someone with a slide can comment.

 

[jblizzle]

You sure it is not 200 gpH?

My slide probably uses around 2gpm through a small tube. But other larger slides use large PVC pipe to feed a lot of water.

 

[vealessi]

it's definitely gpM - I have 2 spec sheets for fiberglass slides - one shows 200GPM and the other 150-200GPM. You can go to the Dolphin Slide website and look at their spec sheets; "GPM required" is in the lower left corner

 

[vealessi]

does anybody have a fiberglass slide that could comment? happy with it? does it require regular re-gelcoating / maintenance? how many gpm are you using? the polypro slide sounds like the better way to go, but $2000 more and 14' less (25' vs 39') so it's a hard call

Thanks in advance!