I have a question for the expert pool builders & remodelers. @jimmythegreek @bdavis466 or others.
My COVID-19 project is to remodel my pool. I purchased a foreclosure and the pool was left abandoned for a long time. There was hollow sounding brick coping and cracked / missing tile. Also, there was a significant crack in the plaster all the way around the spa bench but the pool did hold water. After draining the pool, I also found that some of the plaster sounded hollow. I decided to remove all the coping and tile, repair the bond beam and complete a full chip-out of the old plaster. Replace the coping and tile myself and then hire a plaster company to put the new plaster in.
I removed all of the old coping and tile and found the beam was in pretty good shape except by the swim out. Most of the hollow sounding coping was because the mortar had delamated from the beam or the bottom of the coping. Where the beam was damaged, I formed it up and used the advice from Davileet's Bond Beam Repair thread (Bond beam repair) to pour the new beam. That all seemed to go well. In the spa bench I found what appeared to be sand and after a bit of research I'm pretty sure the bench was made of a significant amount of rebound. I chipped it out down to where it was solid and formed it up, added rebar and poured it too. That seemed to go well.
During the plaster chip-out I found two spots where large chunks of gunite were coming up easily and it continued to sound hollow and appear to not be very solid. A closer inspection revealed that there was a lot of sand in these areas too. It almost seems that rebound was used in these spots but I don't know for sure. I got a power washer out and sprayed these areas to wash away all the sand and get down to what was solid. In one spot, I hit mud. In other words, I'm pretty sure I went all the way through the gunite with just a power washer. Everywhere else seems to be solid but I got a little concerned when it went all the way through.
My question is, can I just mix and pour cement in the spots that were bad using the same high-strength mix (with plasticizer ) that I used for the beam repair? Will that be strong enough to hold? My pool is well above the water table (built in to the side of a hill such that the bottom of the pool is above the ground about 30ft away)
Here are the two spots in question: In the first one, you can see where I hit mud. In the second photo, you can the line from my main drain.
Let me know what you think. I appreciate your time.
My COVID-19 project is to remodel my pool. I purchased a foreclosure and the pool was left abandoned for a long time. There was hollow sounding brick coping and cracked / missing tile. Also, there was a significant crack in the plaster all the way around the spa bench but the pool did hold water. After draining the pool, I also found that some of the plaster sounded hollow. I decided to remove all the coping and tile, repair the bond beam and complete a full chip-out of the old plaster. Replace the coping and tile myself and then hire a plaster company to put the new plaster in.
I removed all of the old coping and tile and found the beam was in pretty good shape except by the swim out. Most of the hollow sounding coping was because the mortar had delamated from the beam or the bottom of the coping. Where the beam was damaged, I formed it up and used the advice from Davileet's Bond Beam Repair thread (Bond beam repair) to pour the new beam. That all seemed to go well. In the spa bench I found what appeared to be sand and after a bit of research I'm pretty sure the bench was made of a significant amount of rebound. I chipped it out down to where it was solid and formed it up, added rebar and poured it too. That seemed to go well.
During the plaster chip-out I found two spots where large chunks of gunite were coming up easily and it continued to sound hollow and appear to not be very solid. A closer inspection revealed that there was a lot of sand in these areas too. It almost seems that rebound was used in these spots but I don't know for sure. I got a power washer out and sprayed these areas to wash away all the sand and get down to what was solid. In one spot, I hit mud. In other words, I'm pretty sure I went all the way through the gunite with just a power washer. Everywhere else seems to be solid but I got a little concerned when it went all the way through.
My question is, can I just mix and pour cement in the spots that were bad using the same high-strength mix (with plasticizer ) that I used for the beam repair? Will that be strong enough to hold? My pool is well above the water table (built in to the side of a hill such that the bottom of the pool is above the ground about 30ft away)
Here are the two spots in question: In the first one, you can see where I hit mud. In the second photo, you can the line from my main drain.
Let me know what you think. I appreciate your time.
