Pool bowing in at the bottom for a single upright

[supernat10]

Hey all, I removed my above ground pool this March to re-level the area and add pavers, because the installer did not do this well during initial install 8 years ago. Mainly was concerned because I could hear creaking when swimming last year and realized things were off level a couple inches, needed a new liner anyway. I got the pool back together, and installed the top coping and uprights, and then put the top rails on after it had about 10% water in it. I did run into one issue when putting those on. Every rail was at the very extent of its screw slot, and the last two rails I needed to tie together were inches apart from being able to screw down, so I had to loosen everything, and then pull those together pretty hard to get to where I could just put the screw in sideways to grab the hole. Hard to explain, but basically I noticed it made the wall non-round at that one location. And that was the location next to the upright that is now bowing in at the bottom, so totally could have been due to this.

When I was removing the pool, it also bent somewhere near this area, I think, so it may be related to that.

The wall is still in the rail, but how much should I be concerned with this? Obviously, I'll keep an eye on it each day. Anyone have any clever ideas on how to pull the bottom outward? I'm guessing that's near impossible.


You can see here the rail is not round, it's being sucked inwards at this upright. Every other upright is perfectly fine and wall is straight.

 

[Texas Splash]

Yikes. I'm afraid there is no easy answer for this one. No way I can think of to push that wall back out. In an ideal scenario you would hope the force of the water would've helped push the wall outward, but apparently the paver base didn't support that one area allowing it to drop-off inward. That's a shame. No telling if it has stopped shifting or will get worse, but something to watch for sure.

 

[supernat10]

Yikes. I'm afraid there is no easy answer for this one. No way I can think of to push that wall back out. In an ideal scenario you would hope the force of the water would've helped push the wall outward, but apparently the paver base didn't support that one area allowing it to drop-off inward. That's a shame. No telling if it has stopped shifting or will get worse, but something to watch for sure.

Now that I'm looking at it more closely, it may be due to the paver not being fully under the upright. It's probably acting like a pivot in the middle of the ground plate, which tipped inward. We have high winds here, nearly constantly, and I was in a rush to get this thing up without it collapsing, so I probably missed that it wasn't fully on the paver. Someone suggested that I might try to pull the plate back out somehow. Maybe I could wedge up under it just ever so slightly, and lift up on the upper part of the wall, then pull the wedge out. I'm confident there's no way I can move around this much weight though. So yep, I'll keep an eye out until the end of the year. May just undo and replace the liner again next year (what a pain).