Should I coat the outside of my pool for backfill?

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rsmith31170

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Jul 22, 2009
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Just had a Doughboy Desert Spring 24 foot installed yesterday 24 inches deep. There is a 18 inch gap around the pool due to the dig. I have been debating whether or not to backfill the pool and have gotten conflicting answers. After research and reading valuable info on this site I have decided to backfill with the soil from the dig, but before I do I have a few questions?

1. Should I coat the outside of the pool being buried or will it be fine without it? Anyone have experience with this?

2. If I only backfill the back half due to a deck being built over the front half of the pool would this cause anymore caving issues than normal due to varying pressure from different sides of the pool. i.e. is is better to just backfill it all
 
That's a loaded question.....first off, if you're going to bury or backfill against a pool, at minimum, you should have put in an "On Ground pool". But now that you have an above ground pool and need to bury it partially, my recommendation is to backfill it all the way around or at least to follow the natural slope of the adjoining land, making sure you go a little higher towards the pool so runoff can flow away from the pool before it makes it's way too deep into the ground.
Frost can cause some issues here - especially if you only fill on one side - your pool can get pushed from the filled side - year after year - slowly distorting it.

I would coat it with tar as well, the wall is already coated from the factory, but the tar will give an extra layer of protection against the acids or bases in the soil from trying to eat your pool wall. Maybe even tack a section of 6mil plastic vapor barrier onto that fresh tar - it should stick all on it's own.

Oh, and DON'T backfill until you have water in your pool!!!
 
mine is burried 18" I backfilled it with sand for which I am glad I have forgotten to turn the water off before and overflowed it a few times. I have treated cedar sides and tacked tar paper (roofing roll) around the outside before the backfill.
 
We had our Doughboy buried 3' last year. Although Doughboy warranty is really good, I'd still feel better if we'd tarred it - which I didn't read about until AFTER we buried ours. Of course, that would probably have voided the warranty - so you may want to check with Doughboy before sealing it with anything.

We backfilled with our yard dirt and we're now building a deck completely around it. But I think things are a bit different in Texas, especially on the cow pasture that our home now sits on :shock: We don't get consistent rain and our cow pasture REALLY dries out and leaves cracks big enough for the furkid's leg to fall into :rant: We're hoping that the deck around the pool will prevent the yard from drying out too badly.
 
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