Well it was a tedious process buts its basically finished now. We purchased a "fixer upper" home outside Dallas, Texas in February knowing a lot of work would be required. The pool renovation and yard renovation grew much larger than anticipated. The previous owners took care of very little. They never sealed the brick patio and brick pavers were popping up all over. It also did not help that the way the original builder built the pool was really messed up. That has been par for the course on this home though.
I will try to document the various issues in this post.
The equipment was generally in favorable condition other than the heater and the time clock. I installed a new 250,000 btu Hayward gas heater and a Jandy Aqualink System and made some minor modifications to the piping to repair some minor leaks. Other than that I was lucky on that end.
The pool shell itself was in good condition with no leaks, which is surprising given how little care it received. Per my neighbor the pool sat full of leaves and green for three years. The plaster showed it and I knew I needed to replaster the pool. I did not expect the other work that would be required nor the problems I would have trying to determine a solution. I was not planning to spend gobs of money to renovate the pool at this time. I was planning that for down the line when I completed a full renovation of the home. Oh well, that plan was about to change...
Here is an overall picture of the pool:
I had already started taking off pavers from the coping area by this time. They were popping off with alarming ease due to water penetrating and a few freeze thaw cycles over the years. Here you can see the paver/bond beam condition that becomes quite problematic:
Note, I was trying to find thin coping materials to match the depth of the existing pavers at the deck. The problem you see is that they poured the pool deck concrete at the same height as the bond beam. This means I was limited to trying to find a coping material of 1/2" unless I wanted to either replace the entire deck, chip down the bond beam or have a condition where the coping is higher than the deck because you see all new coping materials are generally no thinner than 1-1/8 to 1-1/2 inches!
The paver problem grows:
What was starting as a simple replaster and minor paver repair quickly turned into a much more expensive issue. I had about four or five pool companies out to look at my pool. I contacted more by email sending them pictures of the condition. More than often I got little response or if they did come out I never heard from them again. Nobody wanted to try to replace the pavers and they are no longer made this width, length and thickness anyway. I went to every place in town trying to locate them. Each pool company would only work on the project if they could redo everything. Finally, I realized I had a much more significant renovation on my hands and got into touch with three decent companies that would actually call me back and show up on time. What I was proposing was to replace the coping area and the rear paver wall with slate. Nobody was to keen on that and each proposed installing flagstone, requiring a significant chipping down of the bond beam area. Costs were on the rise...
In the end I settled on a small one man company in Dallas called Pool-Tek. I was actually given the owners name (Jerry) by a large reputable pool company that said they did not like to do renovations. Jerry turned out to be quite down to earth and a very responsible guy.
More to come...
Brian
I will try to document the various issues in this post.
The equipment was generally in favorable condition other than the heater and the time clock. I installed a new 250,000 btu Hayward gas heater and a Jandy Aqualink System and made some minor modifications to the piping to repair some minor leaks. Other than that I was lucky on that end.
The pool shell itself was in good condition with no leaks, which is surprising given how little care it received. Per my neighbor the pool sat full of leaves and green for three years. The plaster showed it and I knew I needed to replaster the pool. I did not expect the other work that would be required nor the problems I would have trying to determine a solution. I was not planning to spend gobs of money to renovate the pool at this time. I was planning that for down the line when I completed a full renovation of the home. Oh well, that plan was about to change...
Here is an overall picture of the pool:
I had already started taking off pavers from the coping area by this time. They were popping off with alarming ease due to water penetrating and a few freeze thaw cycles over the years. Here you can see the paver/bond beam condition that becomes quite problematic:
Note, I was trying to find thin coping materials to match the depth of the existing pavers at the deck. The problem you see is that they poured the pool deck concrete at the same height as the bond beam. This means I was limited to trying to find a coping material of 1/2" unless I wanted to either replace the entire deck, chip down the bond beam or have a condition where the coping is higher than the deck because you see all new coping materials are generally no thinner than 1-1/8 to 1-1/2 inches!
The paver problem grows:
What was starting as a simple replaster and minor paver repair quickly turned into a much more expensive issue. I had about four or five pool companies out to look at my pool. I contacted more by email sending them pictures of the condition. More than often I got little response or if they did come out I never heard from them again. Nobody wanted to try to replace the pavers and they are no longer made this width, length and thickness anyway. I went to every place in town trying to locate them. Each pool company would only work on the project if they could redo everything. Finally, I realized I had a much more significant renovation on my hands and got into touch with three decent companies that would actually call me back and show up on time. What I was proposing was to replace the coping area and the rear paver wall with slate. Nobody was to keen on that and each proposed installing flagstone, requiring a significant chipping down of the bond beam area. Costs were on the rise...
In the end I settled on a small one man company in Dallas called Pool-Tek. I was actually given the owners name (Jerry) by a large reputable pool company that said they did not like to do renovations. Jerry turned out to be quite down to earth and a very responsible guy.
More to come...
Brian
