Life expectancy of pool liner track screws?

Zeeks

0
May 23, 2017
4
Litchfield CT
TFP,

About 10 years ago, I had the liner in my pool replaced. It's an in-ground concrete pool. 16x32. Salt water. Liner is still in great shape. The techs basically anchored a bunch of 1x2 pressure treated wood planks along the edge of the concrete pool, attached liner tracks to it, and then hung the new liner. looked great.

Last summer, one of the pressure treated planks began to give. We called the techs. They came to have a look and basically said to call them again when I opened the pool this spring.

Over the winter, nearly all of the wood planking had come down. Turns out that the screws that anchored the wood to the concrete had rusted completely.

However, there were a couple of spots where the screws that held the track in place had completely rusted - and the tracks (along with the liner) fell back in the pool. I thought to myself that this was all probably caused by the salt water.

I've been slowly doing the repairs myself (since getting a tech at this time of year seems impossible).

But when I removed the skimmer from the pool, the screws were pristine. Even the ones that are under the salt water most of the time. No rust at all.

So I found that odd. What sort of life expectancy should I get from the screws that are holding everything together? It doesn't appear that the techs used stainless steel. Anyway, everything I replaced thus far is stainless.

My question: is 10 years a reasonable average life for screws that hold a track in place in a pool - and any associated planking to hold stuff in place?

Thanks

-Z
 
Welcome to TFP! :wave:

Even stainless steel will corrode over time. How fast depends on the actual quality of the stainless steel. The problem with screws above water is that they get coated in dry salt once water evaporates. This accelerates corrosion exponentially more than a screw submersed continually in saline water. Ten years above water, likely splashed with pool water and dried is quite a long time for a screw to survive.
 
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