Pool renovation questions

[Rodex]

Our tile has been rapidly falling off, and the coping stones have seen better days as well. We had a contractor give us an estimate to repair both, as well as redo our outdated mossy-stone waterfall.

Few questions for the group:

1. We have Oklahoma flagstone. It’s nice that it is nonslip, but it also sheds grit and flakes pieces of stone off. Is this still the best nonslip option for Texas?
2. He quoted us $250/ft to repair the “broken beam” which he says he thinks is the root cause for the tile falling off. Just rough measurement from the exposed areas where tile fell off, that’s at least $2500, if not significantly more. That 10 feet would alone would cover redoing the tile again all the way around. Are there other effects we should be concerned about if we decided not to repair the beam?
3. We have always had what looks like calcium or mineral buildup on the tile, above the water line (usually top of the tile). We are now seeing little hard white mounds show up on the plaster. We had not been concerned about resurfacing just yet, but if this is a sign we need to resurface, can it be done after the tile work or does it need to be resurfaced at the same time?

I tried to upload images but it says they’re too big for the server. I’ll post this now and try again when I resize them.

 

[Bperry]

Our tile has been rapidly falling off, and the coping stones have seen better days as well. We had a contractor give us an estimate to repair both, as well as redo our outdated mossy-stone waterfall.

Few questions for the group:

1. We have Oklahoma flagstone. It’s nice that it is nonslip, but it also sheds grit and flakes pieces of stone off. Is this still the best nonslip option for Texas?
2. He quoted us $250/ft to repair the “broken beam” which he says he thinks is the root cause for the tile falling off. Just rough measurement from the exposed areas where tile fell off, that’s at least $2500, if not significantly more. That 10 feet would alone would cover redoing the tile again all the way around. Are there other effects we should be concerned about if we decided not to repair the beam?
3. We have always had what looks like calcium or mineral buildup on the tile, above the water line (usually top of the tile). We are now seeing little hard white mounds show up on the plaster. We had not been concerned about resurfacing just yet, but if this is a sign we need to resurface, can it be done after the tile work or does it need to be resurfaced at the same time?

I tried to upload images but it says they’re too big for the server. I’ll post this now and try again when I resize them.

Hard to see without the pictures, but a broken bond beam would indirectly cause tiles to fall off, but the broken bond beam is a more sognificant problem, thats likely caused by a missing expansion joint between the decking and the coping. Lets see pictures when you get them. iphone has a resize option when you upload.

 

[Rodex]

Hard to see without the pictures, but a broken bond beam would indirectly cause tiles to fall off, but the broken bond beam is a more sognificant problem, thats likely caused by a missing expansion joint between the decking and the coping. Lets see pictures when you get them. iphone has a resize option when you upload.

That’s too bad, we had a pool inspection when we bought the house and the expansion joint was always not great looking. They didn’t mention it at all.
I’ll take some pictures of the expansion joint later.

 

[Rodex]

That’s too bad, we had a pool inspection when we bought the house and the expansion joint was always not great looking. They didn’t mention it at all.
I’ll take some pictures of the expansion joint later.

Most of the expansion joint looks like the one where it looks unbroken. That picture is from the expansion joint behind the long stretch of falling tile as in the previous image.

The worst spots are recently where some of the joint broke off (I’d say the last 5 months?). The area around the skimmer is the worst (image attached) and the other spot has no tile coming off.

 

[Rodex]

Does anybody have any advice on this? There’s no way we would be able to afford what they’re quoting on fixing the beam.

If the beam isn’t critical, does anyone have any experience with similar coping stones to Oklahoma flagstone?

 

[Bperry]

Does anybody have any advice on this? There’s no way we would be able to afford what they’re quoting on fixing the beam.

If the beam isn’t critical, does anyone have any experience with similar coping stones to Oklahoma flagstone?

Broken bond beam is critical. Water leaking through it can cause a lot of damage.

 

[Rodex]

Broken bond beam is critical. Water leaking through it can cause a lot of damage.

Thanks. How would we know if it’s already caused a lot of damage? Last thing we want is to agree to a repair and suddenly more major things have to be repaired.

 

[Bperry]

Thanks. How would we know if it’s already caused a lot of damage? Last thing we want is to agree to a repair and suddenly more major things have to be repaired.

Water leaking into the surrounding soils can cause erosion and sinking of the deck. Happened to mine, ive got a thread here explaining how it was repaired

 

[Rodex]

Water leaking into the surrounding soils can cause erosion and sinking of the deck. Happened to mine, ive got a thread here explaining how it was repaired

I’ll take a look, thanks. I don’t see anything like that, no sinking of the deck. Every now and then I check for leaking with the bucket test, but haven’t noticed anything so far. However, it’s been about a year since I last checked it.

 

[Rodex]

I posted previously about needing to retile and reset the coping stones - but there was concern from the pool builder that there was a broken bond beam. Yesterday they started demoing and found some interesting things.

The bond beam is not broken - phew. They found that the crack was through a very thick layer of mortar on top of the bond beam and under the coping stones, but that the beam itself was fine. They think the reason that the mortar cracked, and subsequently pushed the tile off the wall and the coping stones up, was deck rebar buried in the mortar under the coping stones. They think that shifting of the surrounding deck over time lifted the rebar slightly, creating a small crack that let water in, and the rebar got wet and then made it all worse over time.

They cut out the old mortar and hacked off the rebar extension and will lay mortar back down and top with the Oklahoma flagstone. We had them go ahead and demo the ugly mossy boulder waterfall and put in a more modern wall - will help with getting rid of the nooks that wasps and spiders love to build nests in, as well as reduce the overall footprint it takes up so we can walk a full circle around the pool.

It’s still unclear whether we actually have a leak or not - if it is there, it’s slow. It’s possible it’s at the skimmer, if at all.

 

[Rodex]

Before:


After:


Looks Iike I’ll be upgrading my waterfall pump soon to a variable speed to be able to dial the speed in. Right now it gushes out at a pretty high rate. I have one of those V Greens for my skimmer pump.