Hi Everyone!
Back in July I posted about my liner having a leak. At the time, I couldn't find the leak and was looking for some advice. I did get a lot of helpful responses, which is why this forum is the BEST! Anyway, nothing I was actively doing was working, and I was losing 3-4 inches a day. Finally I decided to follow the advice of some who said to just let it drain down to the leak. In hindsight I'm thinking that this advice must have come from someone who didn't realize that my pool was partially buried.
Here is a picture from before we put the deck up for reference:
Once the water level was even with the ground level, the leak slowed down. (A bit of history, this was our 5th summer with this pool.) Here is a picture with the deck, which is important to the rest of this story:
So every day for probably 2 weeks after work, the kids and I were getting in the pool and searching every inch of the liner for even tiny pin-hole leaks with no success. The only place where we could see wet dirt was near the stairs, so we (incorrectly) assumed that the stairs must have rubbed a hole near there. As it turns out, the leak was more likely along the wall nearest the house. And all that time, unbeknownst to us, the ground under the deck is becoming more and more saturated with water, every step we took was pushing the deck footers further and further into the soil. Some of you can probably see where this is headed.
Finally I decided that we weren't going to find the leak and I ordered a new liner, new strips, new skimmer gaskets, and new cove. While we were waiting for everything to arrive, the worst happened:
I went outside and the wall had come loose from the uprights. There was tons of dirt pushing into it. By this point it's mid-August and at least 100 degrees every day. I knew it was a bigger job that we could handle (no longer a mere liner replacement) so I started looking for someone to come save my pool. We did start taking the deck apart, which is not a fun under-taking in that heat. I tried contacting the person who installed my pool, but he's no longer in the area. After many attempts at finding someone in my area that even worked with above-ground pools (many wouldn't work with buried pools or pools with a deep end) I finally found someone. Well, that guy kept re-scheduling and coming up with lame excuses for why he couldn't make it out.
In the meantime we got the deck cut away and the old liner out.
First picture is where we rented a sump-pump to get the water out of the deep end.
Second picture is where we discovered just how bad the nightmare was, there was water under the liner and the sand had seriously eroded.
Third picture is where we had removed the rest of that part of the deck.
Finally last week I was put in touch with someone who would come all the way to my house and had experience with my type of pool. After a lengthy conversation, I felt confident that I had found the right person. He even had before and after pictures of pools that he had fixed with similar issues. One of the things that he and his crew kept saying that made me feel good was that whoever had put my pool in had done an amazing job. I find it the height of professionalism when one company recognized quality in a "competing" company's work.
Here is the last picture I have, right after a storm blew through and pulled the wall further away, eroding the sand even more.
I know that is a lot of back-story, but I'm posting this as kind of a cautionary tale. If I had just replaced the liner right away, I would have only been out the cost of the liner and supplies. Now I'm having to pay someone else to help clean-up a mess that could have been avoided.
Plus, I love threads that have tons of pictures and I hope I'm not jinxing myself but I would love to be able to post a few successful "after" pictures in the coming days. The crew showed up to work this morning and I'm so excited I can hardly stand it.
Back in July I posted about my liner having a leak. At the time, I couldn't find the leak and was looking for some advice. I did get a lot of helpful responses, which is why this forum is the BEST! Anyway, nothing I was actively doing was working, and I was losing 3-4 inches a day. Finally I decided to follow the advice of some who said to just let it drain down to the leak. In hindsight I'm thinking that this advice must have come from someone who didn't realize that my pool was partially buried.
Here is a picture from before we put the deck up for reference:
Once the water level was even with the ground level, the leak slowed down. (A bit of history, this was our 5th summer with this pool.) Here is a picture with the deck, which is important to the rest of this story:
So every day for probably 2 weeks after work, the kids and I were getting in the pool and searching every inch of the liner for even tiny pin-hole leaks with no success. The only place where we could see wet dirt was near the stairs, so we (incorrectly) assumed that the stairs must have rubbed a hole near there. As it turns out, the leak was more likely along the wall nearest the house. And all that time, unbeknownst to us, the ground under the deck is becoming more and more saturated with water, every step we took was pushing the deck footers further and further into the soil. Some of you can probably see where this is headed.
Finally I decided that we weren't going to find the leak and I ordered a new liner, new strips, new skimmer gaskets, and new cove. While we were waiting for everything to arrive, the worst happened:
I went outside and the wall had come loose from the uprights. There was tons of dirt pushing into it. By this point it's mid-August and at least 100 degrees every day. I knew it was a bigger job that we could handle (no longer a mere liner replacement) so I started looking for someone to come save my pool. We did start taking the deck apart, which is not a fun under-taking in that heat. I tried contacting the person who installed my pool, but he's no longer in the area. After many attempts at finding someone in my area that even worked with above-ground pools (many wouldn't work with buried pools or pools with a deep end) I finally found someone. Well, that guy kept re-scheduling and coming up with lame excuses for why he couldn't make it out.
In the meantime we got the deck cut away and the old liner out.
First picture is where we rented a sump-pump to get the water out of the deep end.
Second picture is where we discovered just how bad the nightmare was, there was water under the liner and the sand had seriously eroded.
Third picture is where we had removed the rest of that part of the deck.
Finally last week I was put in touch with someone who would come all the way to my house and had experience with my type of pool. After a lengthy conversation, I felt confident that I had found the right person. He even had before and after pictures of pools that he had fixed with similar issues. One of the things that he and his crew kept saying that made me feel good was that whoever had put my pool in had done an amazing job. I find it the height of professionalism when one company recognized quality in a "competing" company's work.
Here is the last picture I have, right after a storm blew through and pulled the wall further away, eroding the sand even more.
I know that is a lot of back-story, but I'm posting this as kind of a cautionary tale. If I had just replaced the liner right away, I would have only been out the cost of the liner and supplies. Now I'm having to pay someone else to help clean-up a mess that could have been avoided.
Plus, I love threads that have tons of pictures and I hope I'm not jinxing myself but I would love to be able to post a few successful "after" pictures in the coming days. The crew showed up to work this morning and I'm so excited I can hardly stand it.
