Getting ready to dig it up - talk me out of it.

[Miataguy]

Sorry ahead of time for the long post.
First of all just reading everyone else's post has helped me alot so far. We purchased a house about three months ago that had an inground concrete kidney shaped pool. First time pool owner. At first the water quality was bad (green like a pond) and through this forum I turned it sparkly blue. Then the OLD de filter clogged up (green water again). Then when I TSP'd the old fingers I noticed a lot of cracked ones - tried to go on = DE all in the pool, green water soon to follow. Purchased new sand filter, now back to blue water again.
This brings me to the present. I'm losing three inches of water every two days. No visible leaks but I have over 1200 sq feet of concrete. Tried the bucket test to verify - six inches of water in five days. Went to blow out lines and the ends of the returns are concreted into the pool - will not screw off for anything to accept plugs. So, with it being 45 degrees out and at Christmas time, I just decided to lower the water below the skimmer and returns and pack it up for the winter and deal with it next year(had originally decided to not winterize and just keep pool running on abreviated cycle). Now I found that the ladders and the handrail in shallow end are concreted into the ground - so I can't remove them to put on my new cover. Is this normal? I can't take it anymore. I'm down over a thousand dollars to get it to this point, I have a good size leak ($$$), the guy at the pool store says I'm way overdue for a resurfacing (pool's seven years old, has two large cracks that look like they could have been previous repairs, and now is getting all sorts of funny molting looking things around sides and walls - it's not algae, won't scrub, & the metal out stuff didn't ding it either). Am I just not the right person to own a pool or is this all just normal? I'm ready to throw in the towel.
Sorry again for the long post, I'm extremely frustrated.
Daniel

[CarlD]

I'm no expert on I/G or concrete pools but is sounds like you need some fairly major, but no catastrophic repairs.
Here are my best guesses, and I'll let the professional installers here (Like Sean) clean up my mistakes.
1) Sounds like you need some concrete work done to make the ladders removable, and you need to have the returns redone to make then removable and repairable. You may have to remove part of your deck and dig to do this.
2) It also sounds like you need to have your pool acid washed to remove all the junk and re-surfaced.
3) If this doesn't stop the water loss you probably have a cracked pipe which needs to be replaced.
4) It MAY be possible to put in a vinyl liner over the concrete, ending some, but not all of your problems.

Get some estimates on the repairs from (if possible) reputable pool repair services. Considering what it costs to INSTALL such a pool new, repairing it correctly may be far cheaper, and STILL give you a wonderful pool. Supposing it costs you, say, $7000 to repair your pool (properly, of course!) I'd personally say that was a bargain, and, using your knowledge from this forum, you shouldn't run into such problems again--because you'll know how to spot them in advance.

Are you a pool person? Only you can answer that, but you have ALREADY successfully cleaned up old messes due to mis-mgt by the previous owner--and I'd say that's exactly what we AIM for here. That's pretty darn good!