danospool - chalking paint

30+ yrs old gunnite/plaster pool, 35,000 gal inground, sand filter. Painted with epoxy 15-20 yrs ago, then again with acrylic 10-12 yrs ago. Old finish stripped off & replaced with mono-epoxy last year. Finish was fine for western Washington 2010 pool season. Due to long, crappy winter/spring, didn't open pool until mid-May. When we did, we found some paint chalking. PH at opening was about 7.0, Alk was 95, Cal was 30, TC was 5(test kit is Poolsolutions PS233). Added borax & baking soda so far, rasied PH to 7.2 & Alk to 130. Any advice as to how to proceed to prevent future paint chalking? Thanks.

Dan

Unfortunately, I have a very clear idea about how to stop epoxy from chalking: remove it!

Epoxy paints chalk. All of them, even Kelley Technical's Zeron, which I have often recommended, chalk. Chalking is how epoxy pool paints wear down. Light chalking upon opening is normal with all epoxies. The difference is, crummy epoxies chalk a LOT more. Acrylic can be even worse, but it sounds like you are past that problem.

I suppose, if you drained the pool, and covered it with a water and light tight cover, that would stop the chalking. But, that's about it.

With Zeron, a party of middle school boys will work over the pool pretty thoroughly, and get the chalking done for the season. I've tried removing the chalking by wiping with wet towels, but found I couldn't generate enough pressure to do so effectively -- bare wet feet seem to work best. I've never had the chalking from Zeron do more than mark swimmers feet, but I've had other epoxies cloud the pool the first week of use. One horrible acrylic left the pool milky for half a summer.

I'm assuming that by mono-epoxy, you meant single component epoxy? My understanding has been that those were likely to be far less durable than high quality two component epoxies. I'd be interested in learning whether your experience continues to confirm this.

Sorry for your problems

Ben

Ben, thank you for your thoughts. We'll see what happens and I'll let you know how it goes. Assuming I eventually get tired of messing with the painted surface, what would my options be? Should we just bite the bullet and pay a small fortune to have the pool replastered? Is there any other kind of surface option that would work better? Any thoughts, opinions, or advice would be welcome.

Dan

What you should do, depends on your budget and how much a less than perfect pool surface bothers you and your family.

How to proceed, also depends on your budget. You might want to take a look at Kelley Tech's guides: http://www.kelleytech.com/olympic/ol...-bulletins.asp

However, if you want to go with a really new and durable surface, whether it's properly applied epoxy OR plaster, your first step is going to be to strip what's there, completely. That hodge-podge of coatings is going to make anything put on top of it unreliable. (Fiberglass is a possible exception -- but fiberglass pool rehab coatings have a very checkered history. Unless you have a skilled local installer who you completely trust, I would recommend ruling fiberglass out.)

When I've had to strip surfaces, this is the tool I've used: http://www.aurand.net/aurandweb/site/electric_tools.php . If you wanted to do it yourself, you could buy one of these, some Zeron, and some Poxoprime . . . and do your pool in sections, over a couple of seasons.

Ben

Just so you know, I should probably explain exactly what was done to this pool. The original owners(my wife's parents) put the pool in when they built their house back in the late 1970's. My father-in-law was more about entertaining & pool parties than maintenance, so the pool spent the next 30 years being green a lot, followed by lots of shock and other harsh chemicals. The plaster didn't hold up well under that kind of treatment, so he had it refinished with epoxy(might have been Zeron) 15 or 20 years ago. Of course the abuse continued until they decided to sell their home and move to a retirement community. At that time(about 2000) they refinished the pool again, this time putting acrylic over the epoxy.

We bought their house to keep the pool in the family for another generation(on reflection, possibly a mistake). To make a long story a little shorter, we strung the acrylic finish along until 2010, when I retired. At that time we drained the pool, and using some truly nasty paint remover hand scraped the whole pool - took about 2 1/2 months. We took it right down to the plaster in most places. There were a few areas where there was a little epoxy primer left, but nothing else. Then we washed and rinsed the pool per the application instructions for the single-component epoxy we used. One coat of etching primer, two coats of epoxy were applied, cured for 5 days, then pool was filled. The point of telling you this is to show that there's not really a hodge-podge of coatings under our refinish. Info you may not need, but there it is if you do.

Dan

No, your info is relevant.

Based on what you just told me, the chalking is probably a result of the paint you applied. If it's chalking only a little -- enough to mark the bottom of your feet the FIRST time you walk on a particular area but not enough to cloud the pool, you might have used Zeron. In that case, there's nothing to fix: that's just how epoxy is.

If it's chalking more than that, you can RECOAT epoxy with better epoxy, if you prep the surface properly. That would allow you to go to a Zeron finish, which would still chalk as above.

Ben

Just thought I'd give an update on the paint situation. Looks like the mono-epoxy stuff we used is crap. As soon as we started using the pool this summer, the paint started coming loose in some areas of the pool, especially the benches and steps, and peeling off in big pieces. I can see blisters and cracks in the deeper parts of the pool also. Just so everyone knows, the paint we used was LifeGuard Mono-Epoxy over their etching primer. Both are sold by Top Secret Coatings, which sells many types of paint over the internet. Some people claim to have had success with their pool paint, but I'm not one of them. The vendor says the paint failed because of moisture corruption before the paint was fully cured. I say hogwash, but that's between me and them. Just be forewarned that this paint is apparently very, very difficult to apply properly. I followed all the instructions faithfully, but apparently that wasn't good enough. DIYers beware!

All that means that we will have to drain the pool again, remove the finish(sandblasting this time), and try something else. Ben, I gather that you are not a big fan of painting pools, so what do you think of replastering? If a replaster job is done right and maintained properly, will it last a good long time? I'm at the point where I'm a little gun-shy about painting again, so my wife and I are seriously thinking about replastering, even though it is quite expensive. Any thoughts or guidance you may have would be welcome.

Dan