She Crashed In !!!!!!

[hoffmans]

So sad,
The pool went up on Firday. All went splendidly once we got some brute force to come help us. Here is that day in picutures if you haven't already seen the thread http://www.poolforum.com/pf2/showthread.php?p=45554#post45554

Then all Heck broke loose.
Here is what we have now.

http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i201/hoffmans8ormore/crash2.jpg

http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i201/hoffmans8ormore/crash4.jpg

http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i201/hoffmans8ormore/crash3.jpg

DH braced her back up.
http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i201/hoffmans8ormore/crashfix1.jpg

http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i201/hoffmans8ormore/crashfix3.jpg


It really really seems like the liner is too small or short.
When we hung the liner and got the seams straight and all that jazz- there was still a half a foot to a foot between the liner and the foam cove and also between the liner and the wall.
The worst area was where we last hung the last part of the liner- it was foot away from the wall and the cove.
We thought it was maybe the wind between the liner and wall, we thought- well this is the way liners should be- they are meant to stretch into place under warm weather conditions.

So we started adding water. Thinking the water and the sun will strech that liner right into place.
NOT !!
By that night we were worried- we saw the liner pulling on the top rails, so we stopped the water & went to bed. We still weren't sure if it was a liner problem or a wind problem.

Saturday morning we turned the water back on. The water made it worse. It started pulling the top of the wall in. Turned off the water.
Then came the big winds and she crashed in.
Tom braced her back up and she held for the day and all night. It rained & stormed all night, there were tornadoes everywhere.

Today it is still pouring rain. The more rain water that goes in the more the walls are buckling in & the liner is pulling the top rails in and down.

At first the problem only seemed to be there on the south side where she crashed in ( also were the prevailing winds we blowing at the pool), But now all around the whole pool the walls are buckling.
If you look under the Top Seats you can see some of the Top Rails twisted inside the Top Plates.


There is not 2" of sand in the bottom b/c the foam cove and Happy Bottom didn't call for it.

We are currently siphoning out water to relieve the liner pull. But the rain is relentless. Tom just left to buy a pump from Lowes.

If there is a break in the rain I'll see if i can get pictures of the other walls sucking in.

Don't know what to do.

Tom wants a professional pool installer to come out here and make an assement of what is causing this- wind or liner.

I will call the internet sales people tomorrow and ask them what they think.
Soooo Sad.
~Hoffmans

[Watermom]

I don't have any words of wisdom for you. Just want you to know how badly I feel that you guys are having such a hard time getting this pool up. You will eventually get it. Just keep thinking about the enjoyment you will have when it is finally fixed, filled and you are floating around in it soaking up the sun. Keep your chin up! We are all rooting for you! And, hopefully somebody here can offer you some advise to help remedy the situation.

[hoffmans]

OK
Tom said it is not the top rails that are not pulling in. It is the walls that are being pulled down & out of the top rails & in in towards the water.
We only put 2-3 inches of water in from the hose.

Then We got 5" of rain in 24 hours.
Flood warnings everywhere.

The pump in there and we got some water out. One of the wall sections that was *sucking in* just popped back out and into it's proper position.
I am hoping that removing some of the water will relieve the pressure on the liner & walls.

We've got to figure out the reason for this problem.
Could it be that we didn't install the liner properly? But the seams were staight.
Could it be that the liner is too short?
Could the liner be too short b/c we followed the Happy Bottom instructions and did NOT put 2" of fill material on the bottom?
Could it be something else??????

Can't wait to hear what the sales lady says tomorrow....
So sad,
~Hoffmans

[hrsdennis]

Hi, I too am sorry you are having problems. The two inches of sand could make a difference but not that much. You will have a much better looking pool with a liner on the small side, such as yours, rather than a liner that is to big for your pool. That's the thing with beaded liners. You never know what you will get.

Your liner needs overhead direct sunlight. The liner has a lot of stretching to do. It will do it, it just needs a warm sunny day. You would not believe the difference the sun makes.

Be sure also that the bottom of the pool is smooth. Push all of the wrinkles to the outside, this will create more liner at the walls.

The post I made today about my job could never have been done without direct overhead warm sun. That liner was a full 25 mil and took every bit of strentgh my wife and I had to get it over the top rails. After 30 plus minutes of pulling, the liner had warmed up enough to fit the pool. Had I not had overhead sun I would never have attempted it. The difference between 80 degrees and 110 degrees is just amazing.

Hope it works out, Dennis

[matt4x4]

Ouch! You have no idea how bad I feel for your situation right now, my best advice at this point in the game is to empty it and wait for a full sun day, you can hold the framework in place by tying it back from under the top rails (used wire bent into hooks to overhang wall) to stakes in the ground - like a tent.
I thought I had a pic of mine in that state on my PC, but after looking - I don't.
Mine stayed that way for 2 weeks waiting for the right warmer sunny day to install the liner - finally, I'd had enough and installed it on one of those grey spring days where it was threatening to rain, and I end up fnding out that my J hook liner is actually oversized - when we had it hung all around, I had almost a foot of material left over - now since we had tugged it as we hooked it on, we ended up untugging it all around and it ended up seating perfectly.
Yours needs full sun, if you put it in with full sun - likely a morning job, then let it hang until noon or 2 pm before adding water, it should stretch plenty for it all to come together.
Your wall looks ok, no real big creases. from what I can tell, it'll all work out just fine.

[NWMNMom]

Yikes. I feel so bad for you! That is what was happening with ours and we stopped and the next day at about 11:30 began again when it was HOT and sunny - man, that liner stretched like ever. All is not lost, it will go and it will be good. Just waiting on the sun - I see in the forecast that it IS on its way - this afternoon or tomorrow it should be perfect for that liner. Fingers crossed for you.

[hoffmans]

Thank you guys for your help.
One more question.

Our fear is this: When there is little to no water in the pool the liner
is 8 to 12" away from the walls and about 6" or more away from the foam
cove. Will the liner stretch that much into place under the sun?
Can we leave the liner hanging in the pool ( forecast is for rain for the next
5-6 days)?

When we had 8" of water in the pool, the liner was still quite
away from the wall and cove.

One other thing, the top rails could be as much as 1" out of level worst case.
Is that acceptable?
It looked good using a four foot level with a board on edge.
But later we used a laser level it was out of level 1/2" to 1".

Update:
We pumped the water down to 2-3" and most of the sides popped back into
shape.

Thank you,
~Hoffmans

[hoffmans]

Matt-
Thank you for the PM, it was very helpful.
6 daughters and 2 boys.... I don't know how much help any of them are. Not one of them is taller than my shoulders.

We will do take your advice on the liner adjustment.
I think you are right. Too many wrinkles on the bottom and not enough sun.

We did measure the pool- it is round.

It sure is a nice to have you guys all here.

So i guess we wait for a hot sunny day.
Should we leave the liner hang there till next week or should we drop the line down to the floor?

Thank You.
~Hoffmans

[hoffmans]

Forgive me for all the questions guys,
:(

While we are reinstalling the liner ( on the hot sunny day ) should we leave the top rails off untill the liner is completely on or will that make the wall want to buckle in ?

Thanks a ton,
~Hoffmans

[matt4x4]

Ok, I'll attempt to answer all questions with this post:

I replied to your other thread extensively - would recommend reading that too - you probably did allready.

Your pool is 33', you can be out over an inch and no problems, so the 1/2" to 1" is completely acceptable.

I can say with confidence that once you empty the liner off and pull it into the right position more appropriately, you will get a lot closer to your walls, the north side looks like it fit very relaxed against the cove and wall judging from the picture, once you adjust it's position as I explained in my text and other post, I'd say you'll have maybe 4" of play there and if you follow my advice and pull the floor outwards as I described when it's got a little water on it, you'll reduce that number to 2". at this point, you'll be swearing at me under your breath since it makes you fingers sore doing that, but you WILL gain a lot of material this way. The time it takes to do that will also help heat and soften the liner.
Think of it this way - 1 small wrinkle easily converts to 1/4" of extra liner on the floor once flat, a larger wrinkle is more like 1/2 inch gained - compare how many wrinkles you see to how many inches you need and you'll have more than enough liner to fill that floor side to side. In the pic with your daughter, I can see SO MUCH available liner, most of those wrinkles are 1-1.5" tall, flattened, they'd gain you 1.5 inches each.
Since it's 5 days of rain, I'd pump it off, fold it in and cover it from any sun (not likely) with a piece of cardboard or something.... I'd worry about wind getting under it if you leave it hanging in there...

When you lay in right the next time, do this: - And make sure you DO NOT have a seam at or near your skimmer/return. I'd hate to see you take it all down again....

Take the sides and fold them onto the floor, grab the side/floor seam and with a person on the opposite end, pull tight, measure, place a piece of electrical tape at the center, do this in the opposite direction, it should give you your center point with an X on the liner.

Now get two people on the outside to hold a tape measure across center of pool, drop a string line at center and put the X under it, remeasure do in opposite direction, tug X into proper place. Recheck this all.
Place a piece of cardboard (protection) down on the X onto which you place a full bucket of water, that should hold it all there, now straighten your liner as best as you can towards the edges.
If it were an overlap, I'd do as Dennis did with the latest install, unforunately you won't have all that excess material at hand.
You can hang the edges in several locations and add a little water - (1") so you can tug the wrinkles out of it towards the ends as I described earlier to you. Once that's done hang the liner fully (without skews as I also described earlier)., then slowly fill, if you notice that the liner needs a little more persuasion here or there, get back inside, and tug from close to center towards that particular corner, it won't do it itself, you have to do it.
once you've got it remove bucket and cardboard underlay, fill, once up about 8-12 inches, you can cut in your return and skimmer if you are happy with the way the walls are now hanging (no skew), if not, readjust as necessary, then cut in return and skimmer, smaller than actual hole by about 1/8". Install fixtures.

I highly recommend hard plumbing shutoff valves at each fixture - about $15 each, you need them many, many, many, many times and you'll be glad that you did it right away.


Shopvacs are handy to help pull it into place and see how it will sit - they help you adjust it close to where you need it to be before adding water.
Duct tape a piace of cardboard over skimmer and return, cut an opening in teh cardboard over return the size of shopvac hose and shove through/seal with tape.

[hoffmans]

Yippee!!!!!!
Before I give our update I want to stop and give thanks to you all who have helped us and sympathized for us.
And a special thanks to Matt & Dennis.:)
This was a serious P.I.A but definitely worth it.

Ok...
SO the hot sunny day came today. All sun and in the mid to upper 80's. And NO WIND!!
http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i201/hoffmans8ormore/sung.gif
Yesterday Tom took down the liner and fixed the few bent up rails ect. ect.
Today Tom got up before the sun and started the coffee pot and went out to turn on the pump(not the pool pump) to get all the water out.
Then he measured for round and checked for level. Made adjustments and got everything to less than an 1" away from perfection.
Then He, Grandpa & I hung the liner.
We got the liner in much better this time. The bottom is smooth and is pushed all the way to the walls.
All went splendidly!
We turned on the hose, put on the topseats and caps.
She has been filling for about 7 hours now.
We have no signs of worry and the liner fits great.

I can't thank you all enough,
I hope lots of people read and learn from our mistakes.

Next step is to get 'er filled w/ water then backfilled and get the porch built ASAP.
I will keep the photo chronicle going.

~Happy Hoffmans

[sevver]

Wow, what a testimony of pure stubborness and determination. I commend you all for not giving up, although how you could have in the middle of it is beyond me. Can't wait to see some pics.

[NWMNMom]

YAY!!!! I am so happy for you!! I knew you would get things worked out. Bet you can't wait to swim!

[matt4x4]

Excellent!
I'm glad it all worked out right the second time!
My son was in ours mid last week for the first time this year - it was 68 and he stayed in almost 1 hour!

[hrsdennis]

So good to hear, enjoy the pool.

Dennis