Hello all,
New to the forum and also to pool ownership. We bought a house with a pool that needed much TLC. It hadn't been opened in sometime and we knew it would be a big job when we bought the house (was a frog swamp at the time). It's a 1960s Sylvan pool. Its concrete. We decided to renovate it because it has a really neat shape. Question I have is about bonding. We hired a renovation company that only does the pool...(coping, tile, plaster, skimmers) they than recommended decking and equipment contractors that they worked with because everything had to be redone. The decking contractor pulled up the old concrete, and we needed to excavate around the pool on one of the sides to put new French drains in as the originals were two shallow and not doing their job anymore. When we excavated we did not see any rebar at all in the pool shell or bonding wire. Keep in mind, at that point the pool shell was in a demo state with the coping removed, the tile and plaster removed and the beam having been chipped down awaiting new product. I did not know much about bonding until I started reading some forums on recently. So fast forward a couple weeks, we get the coping and skimmers installed and now we've been doing the decking. There were two sets of wires that went to the old metal skimmers that were sticking out the ground with green wire. Those original skimmers were removed and replaced with new Pentair skimmers that are completely plastic and don't need to be bonded. Our pool contractor still asked us to make sure the decking contactor did not rip them out because he wanted to make sure he tied into them when he did the bonding. I told the decking contractor who was prepping for concrete to save them and make sure they were not removed. At that point they were sticking out and the decking contractor had compacted stone in ready to pour the concrete. Well I turn around for two seconds, they removed them....the pool contractor was simultaneously there and ran #8 copper around the whole pool and tied it into the pool ladder and back to the equipment. That than went back to the new equipment (which the pump bonds the water with a coil inside it's housing). The lights are pentair globrite LEDs (which, yes I know, they aren't the best, I've discovered that today too). The pool contractor said that the wires that were removed may not have connected to the pool rebar, know one could find the bonding lines to the pool shell.....and remember, we had the entire thing on one side excavated for the drainage and no one saw rebar or bonding wire at all. So now, I am reading all these forums and kind of freaking out a little bit now. If the bonding is not connected to the rebar, which it sounds like it isn't....is that going to be a huge issue. No one could find it and I didn't realize it was so important until now. To make things worse, since this is a reno, there are very lax regulations as far as the permitting on this project. My equipment contractor did not submit a permit and doesn't think he needs one since he's replacing what was already there. I want to make sure the pool is done right and safe. Do I need to rip up all the decking that's almost complete at this point to find the pool rebar and have them tie into it?
One final point, we did have some cracking issues that we had repaired with torque lock staples before all of this. The pool is still slightly leaking so we're actually going to convert it to a 80 mil PVC liner at the end of the season. We decided to forgo plastering it in leu of this solution. We're basically going to swim in it this season than get the liner in the fall. Wanted to add this info in, because I've read if you have a liner, it acts as a buffer between the pool shell and water so the rebar bonding situation becomes less of a concern. However, if we are using it this summer without the liner, I want to make sure it's safe to do so.
Sorry for the long post, wanted to throw out all the details. Would love some feedback on what to do here. Hopefully I didn't make a massive mistake by not knowing. They finishing up the brick decking tomorrow so I'd like to try and figure this out asap.
Thanks! GB
New to the forum and also to pool ownership. We bought a house with a pool that needed much TLC. It hadn't been opened in sometime and we knew it would be a big job when we bought the house (was a frog swamp at the time). It's a 1960s Sylvan pool. Its concrete. We decided to renovate it because it has a really neat shape. Question I have is about bonding. We hired a renovation company that only does the pool...(coping, tile, plaster, skimmers) they than recommended decking and equipment contractors that they worked with because everything had to be redone. The decking contractor pulled up the old concrete, and we needed to excavate around the pool on one of the sides to put new French drains in as the originals were two shallow and not doing their job anymore. When we excavated we did not see any rebar at all in the pool shell or bonding wire. Keep in mind, at that point the pool shell was in a demo state with the coping removed, the tile and plaster removed and the beam having been chipped down awaiting new product. I did not know much about bonding until I started reading some forums on recently. So fast forward a couple weeks, we get the coping and skimmers installed and now we've been doing the decking. There were two sets of wires that went to the old metal skimmers that were sticking out the ground with green wire. Those original skimmers were removed and replaced with new Pentair skimmers that are completely plastic and don't need to be bonded. Our pool contractor still asked us to make sure the decking contactor did not rip them out because he wanted to make sure he tied into them when he did the bonding. I told the decking contractor who was prepping for concrete to save them and make sure they were not removed. At that point they were sticking out and the decking contractor had compacted stone in ready to pour the concrete. Well I turn around for two seconds, they removed them....the pool contractor was simultaneously there and ran #8 copper around the whole pool and tied it into the pool ladder and back to the equipment. That than went back to the new equipment (which the pump bonds the water with a coil inside it's housing). The lights are pentair globrite LEDs (which, yes I know, they aren't the best, I've discovered that today too). The pool contractor said that the wires that were removed may not have connected to the pool rebar, know one could find the bonding lines to the pool shell.....and remember, we had the entire thing on one side excavated for the drainage and no one saw rebar or bonding wire at all. So now, I am reading all these forums and kind of freaking out a little bit now. If the bonding is not connected to the rebar, which it sounds like it isn't....is that going to be a huge issue. No one could find it and I didn't realize it was so important until now. To make things worse, since this is a reno, there are very lax regulations as far as the permitting on this project. My equipment contractor did not submit a permit and doesn't think he needs one since he's replacing what was already there. I want to make sure the pool is done right and safe. Do I need to rip up all the decking that's almost complete at this point to find the pool rebar and have them tie into it?
One final point, we did have some cracking issues that we had repaired with torque lock staples before all of this. The pool is still slightly leaking so we're actually going to convert it to a 80 mil PVC liner at the end of the season. We decided to forgo plastering it in leu of this solution. We're basically going to swim in it this season than get the liner in the fall. Wanted to add this info in, because I've read if you have a liner, it acts as a buffer between the pool shell and water so the rebar bonding situation becomes less of a concern. However, if we are using it this summer without the liner, I want to make sure it's safe to do so.
Sorry for the long post, wanted to throw out all the details. Would love some feedback on what to do here. Hopefully I didn't make a massive mistake by not knowing. They finishing up the brick decking tomorrow so I'd like to try and figure this out asap.
Thanks! GB
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