Tag Archives: swimming pool

08/05/2014

Pool restoration pt3

By brad isdrab

Continued from Pool restoration pt2

Now that the plaster was clean, the weak parts removed and cracks exposed I was ready to deal with them. I ordered a few different kits of materials; staples and epoxy.

I went with two kinds of staples, basically to reinforce the areas that I was worried may be weak and eventually crack again.

Carbon fiber from Leaktools

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Steel from Torquelock – these ones interest me the most since they are engineered to apply pressure to the crack in addition to holding it.

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I planned these out where I thought they could do the most good;

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Masonry cutting disks in my angle grinder worked well for the countersink, but after drilling for a solid day and having my hands go numb I realized why a regular drill even with a good masonry bit is not the best way,

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So I ran to Harbor freight and picked up a rotary hammer drill, which was AMAZING, so much better! Made the rest of the drilling a breeze in comparison. It was like the difference between when I was chiseling by hand vs when I got the air chisel.

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A lot of staples… just cutting, drilling, and plotting them all out first;

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Might have been overkill for some places, but figured its better that way, than not doing a spot and having that be where it re-cracks;

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The staples were set with a special epoxy;

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Starting with all the carbon fiber ones;

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Then the steel ones, the epoxy is harder to see since its just on the inside, but it was applied to the posts and face surface, then pressed into place. After that I twisted the cam to apply more pressure by drawing the posts closer together;

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07/31/2014

Pool restoration pt2

By brad isdrab

Continued from (http://isdrab.com/2014/07/29/pool-restoration-pt1/)

Once we got the old tiles knocked off and a couple rounds of pressure washing in it was time to see hom much cleaner it’d get by acid etching the surface.

Here I’ve started the acid wash,

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Dropping acid

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I was just doing it by hand, using a spray bottle and scrub-broom,

 

 

this was after the first gallon;
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halfway done;
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after etching through the dark/black stains I could see more to do, and I found the Anthony Pools tile;
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It was in doing the second half that I figured out a better way of applying the acid; using a super soaker!
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After acid washing the whole thing, and continuing to remove old/bad/delaminated plaster, basically anything that sounded hollow, was stained/softer than the rest;

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Chisel out the old and crumbling

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(continued)

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07/29/2014

Pool restoration, pt1

By brad isdrab

When I bought my house back in March, I knew it was a foreclosed fixer-upper and there were a lot of things that had deteriorated after years of neglect, but I’m a sculptor at heart, have worked in construction before, and love getting my hands dirty.

In the listings the pool looked like this;
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either the previous owner started, or the leak drained it partway, because when I got to it it looked like this;
GOPR1748 by bradisdrab, on Flickr

Note the giant tree, which I suspect was the cause of the cracks;

GOPR1595 by bradisdrab, on Flickr

That and years of bad chemestry had left the plaster in pretty bad shape, a lot of bad staining, and softened corroded areas, especially around the cracks. The areas of blue/green aren’t paint, it was just eaten from the old/bad chemestry I think. That discolored plaster was softer and crumbly.;

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So the first thing was the tree, it had to come out;
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Sad to see such a cool old tree go, but there was no point to restoring the pool if the tree was just going to continue breaking it up.

I drained it, knocked out the old tiles, and got a better look at the damage. About half the coping had seperated from the bond beam, and some of the cracks went pretty deep, through the gunnite,

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Then a couple rounds of pressure washing, my fiance got in on the action as well;
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I’d started by hand, but got an air-chisel to chip out the old/bad/delaminated plaster, and open the areas around the cracks;
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It took a few solid days to chip out;
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After the worst of the plaster was removed and a couple rounds of pressure washing it looked like this;
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But I could see that simple patching wasn’t going to cut it, a couple of the crack were pretty bad;
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I’d come up with a plan to fix the cracks, but first I needed to finish preparing the rest.
( continued in part 2)

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