Is there a sealer or other way to fortify pool putty used to fill a leak-prone hairline crack in the bottom of a gunite pool?
My 40+ year old gunite pool developed a hairline crack, now several feet long, in the bottom in the last year or two. I had a diver come out last year and do a dye test. He found a few small leaking areas and filled them with pool putty, feathering out the edges. He came back this year, found more leaking, and filled the entire length of the crack with pool putty. The crack might still be developing, and i plan to have the diver come back regularly. Meanwhile, is there some kind of sealant that might be applied (with or without draining the pool) over the pool putty to increase its strength and leak resistance?
Would of course be good to address the cause of the crack, but i don’t know how to do that. Any thoughts you have on that would be most welcome. The pool is on the side of a steep slope, clay soil that had been moved around some when the house and pool were built in early 1980s. There clearly had been significant settling on the slope side when we bought the house in 2007 – cracks and slanting in concrete deck, and water level closer to tile joints on the slope side than the opposite side. I have been monitoring it for years and it seems stable on the surface (the delta on the water lever has held steady, and deck cracks have not grown) but there must be things happening underground. I called a bunch of local engineering firms to come look at the hillside, and the only one who would come out did a quick and dirty look and thought it looked ok. There are a few pool builders in this area but i don’t think any of them would touch it.
My 40+ year old gunite pool developed a hairline crack, now several feet long, in the bottom in the last year or two. I had a diver come out last year and do a dye test. He found a few small leaking areas and filled them with pool putty, feathering out the edges. He came back this year, found more leaking, and filled the entire length of the crack with pool putty. The crack might still be developing, and i plan to have the diver come back regularly. Meanwhile, is there some kind of sealant that might be applied (with or without draining the pool) over the pool putty to increase its strength and leak resistance?
Would of course be good to address the cause of the crack, but i don’t know how to do that. Any thoughts you have on that would be most welcome. The pool is on the side of a steep slope, clay soil that had been moved around some when the house and pool were built in early 1980s. There clearly had been significant settling on the slope side when we bought the house in 2007 – cracks and slanting in concrete deck, and water level closer to tile joints on the slope side than the opposite side. I have been monitoring it for years and it seems stable on the surface (the delta on the water lever has held steady, and deck cracks have not grown) but there must be things happening underground. I called a bunch of local engineering firms to come look at the hillside, and the only one who would come out did a quick and dirty look and thought it looked ok. There are a few pool builders in this area but i don’t think any of them would touch it.
