Here's a fun problem, bet you haven't seen this before

[boughtaproblem]

Hi everyone! Last May I bought my first home. As you may suspect, this home came with a pool! Well, sort of...

The pool was built in 2006. The people I bought the house from provided me with the paperwork concerning the construction, several months after I had moved in. Well this pool is a bit of a doozy.

The pool only has concrete on 3 sides. The remaining side is a retaining wall, right smack up against the side of the pool. Behind this wall is all the dirt that was removed from the ground during its construction. This wall consists of three sections. Under one of these sections is a sinkhole. This has caused the wall to crack between the first and third section. The wall continues to fall into this sinkhole.

The pool itself was a nightmare last summer. I used this forum and every other resource I could find. It has a chronic metal staining problem that appears to be insolvable. Large amounts of ascorbic acid will clear it temporarily, but then it comes back. Ascorbic acid also of course interferes with the chlorine level, so in addition to the stain it eventually acquired one **** of a bloom that eventually defeated me. It was closed for the winter at great expense.

So, I review the paperwork on this engineering disaster. It looks as if the twenty thousand dollar fee for installation was split into five payments. There is a record for the first three. The last two payments are for the deck (oh which btw is also cracked by the sinkhole) and the final remaining payment. I have a feeling they never finished paying the company, possibly because they were displeased with the results. The warranty for the pool specifically states that the warranty applies only to the original owner, and only after the contract has been paid in full.

I have had a quote from an irrigation and landscaping company about removing the pool completely. The cost to remove it is about 1/4 the price of the original installation. I would love it if I could convince the original company to honor the contract and return the pool to a yard at only incidental expense to me. I doubt this is possible.

Here is a link to an imgur album so that you can see the extent of this monstrosity: http://imgur.com/a/wgzXF

Any advice would be appreciated, both legal and landscaping.

 

[jblizzle]

Welcome to TFP!!!

It does not look like the pool has been affected. Might just need some attention to the tilted wall.

Were you using metal sequestrant to prevent the staining from returning?

 

[swimcmp]

Did you have any home inspections by qualified professionals, if so that may be your only recourse. I will look at the pictures tomorrow as they were slow loading tonight. But thinking that some of this should have been visible prior to purchase. As to the original builder assisting in making it right pretty confident that he is a fly by night kind of builder that has given the honest builder a bad name.

 

[keithw]

I doubt you have any legal recourse and I would forget contacting the original builder because from looking at your pictures, they appear somewhat incompetent. The wall was not built correctly and I cannot imagine piling dirt from a pool onsite rather than removing it. I would guess the sinkhole is probably not a sinkhole but is rather a result of the dirt that was piled there not having sufficient time to settle before the wall was built on it.

What kind of pool is it? It appears to be fiberglass. If you do not like the wall, you could remove the wall, cap off the waterfall pipe, reset the exposed plumbing, deal with the slope, and lay down a deck on the other side. That is probably the most expensive fix. Or you can just fix the wall. The problem with the wall is that the right and left sides were never tied into the center portion. There should have been horizontal runs of rebar every few rows to tie it all together or it should have been one contiguous wall rather than three separate as it appears it is. The right side appears to have a nice arch to to so that has probably kept that portion from moving. If it were me and I was looking for an inexpensive fix, I would carefully jack the wall back flush by using that tree back behind it. If doing that creates a gap at the bottom I would use a few bags of cement to make a new footer. Then angle grind some channels horizontally across the back of the wall between the two sections going about 4 ft on either side of the crack, every other course of bricks. Lay rebar into the channel, epoxy it in, and then put a small new brick wall in the back, going from 4ft back on the main wall right up to where you have the turn in the broken wall. As you lay each row, every few bricks, I would drill into the old wall, epoxy in a small piece of rebar, and then drill into the brick of the new wall so that they were attached to each other as well. Do the same on the end where the bend and the new wall would meet. Then fill the new wall with cement as you go up. On the new wall I would dig down a bit an pour a footer for it.

As someone else mentioned you should probably use a metal sequestering agent if you have a metal issue.

 

[ssgumby]

The wall doesnt seem to serve any purpose other than holding back the fill dirt they took out. They literally look like they dug the hold, had a pile of dirt so said hey, lets just build a wall to hide it.

If it was me, I would start taking the wall down from top to bottom. Regrade and replumb that area as needed. If you are handy, this wouldnt cost too much IMO.

 

[swimcmp]

I looked at the pictures finally. Looks to me like the yard was dug down to achieve a flat area to build. Don't believe from the pictures that it was built up. Probably the corner that is sinking was excavated to much fill placed and now has settled allowing the cracks. Looks lke they put a water feature in the block wall that is why it is placed so close to the pool. The chance of the original builder returning the yard to pre-pool condition is none. He would but you would spend as much as the original pool build probably.