Major Renovation & First Post

[scavdog]

Greetings all,

I have a 33 year old gunite pool that majorly needed a renovation. Having received quotes as high as 12k for gunite and tile repair, I decided to go the DIY route. At some point in the 1980's the pool was refinished. However over time there were pockets forming between the layers of gunite.

At this stage of the game the "Kool Deck" has been removed (that was lots of fun) and the deteriorating of gunite (stairs and walls) and all the tile have been chipped out.

Assuming that the next step is refinishing the gunite, should I be seeking a contractor to do the work? I assume yes. Any advice would be appreciated.

I will post some pics later on this evening.

[Poconos]

Welcome to the forum.
I can't help here but someone will be along. I'm not sure if you will be able to post pics yet as Ben is still tweaking permissions. Heck, even I can't post a real pic unless I use something like photobucket which I won't so. Even then I'm not sure if I still can with the new software and settings.
Al

[scavdog]

http://www.landorseafabrication.com/images/joes/pool1.jpg


http://www.landorseafabrication.com/images/joes/pool2.jpg

[scavdog]

Bummer. I was hoping for more action on these forums :(

[PoolDoc]

I'm sorry, but if I'd looked at this sooner, I could have told you that your chances of getting good answers here was poor.

Some of it's statistics. Of the 10,000,000+ pools in the US, over 80% are AG pools. Of the ~2,000,000 that remain, probably 60% of those are vinyl. This means that less than 10% of pools are inground concrete.

Worse, the huge majority of those are in Florida or California. In your area -- the Northeast -- the proportion of pools that are some flavor of vinyl or other non-concrete is way over 90%.

But another part of the problem is the sort of guy who has the knowledge you want.

Here on these forums, most of the answers are from pool owners like yourself, who've learned pool chemistry and pool care from my sites and from doing it themselves. But, your project is not a typical DIY task. It's very specialized, and takes specialized skills and knowledge.

I know some guys that know those sorts of things -- I'm not really expert on concrete -- but none of them are the sort of guy that hangs out on the Internet, and they don't type that well, either.

There are some books, but the ones I've seen aren't very good.

So . . . as far as I know, if you don't have the knowledge to figure it out for yourself, your only bet is to find a good local contractor. They are rare in the NE, but they are there if you look hard enough.

Good luck!

PoolDoc